News from Google

The Moz Top 10

2013-10-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

The Moz Top 10

What You Need to Know in the World of Inbound Marketing and SEO

October 2013, #2 - Subscribe here

Don't miss these 28 (and counting!) top-notch, actionable ideas on how to improve your website's user interface to both tickle your visitors and improve your conversion rates.

Mega-SERP: A Visual Guide to Google

Google is revolutionizing the search results page almost daily. What happens when a crazy scientist mashes all of Google's new search results features onto one page?

Google to Sell Users' Endorsements

The world's largest search engine changed their terms of service to allow them to show more personal endorsements alongside paid advertisements. What's this mean to privacy and online search?

How to Diagnose Your Traffic Drop

After Google released the Hummingbird update, more webmasters became confused over traffic fluctuations more than ever. Was it Panda, Penguin, or something else? Michael Cottam shows you his technique for site diagnosis.

8 Effective Email Marketing Strategies, Backed by Science

Email marketing best practices are often confusing riddles supported only by anecdotal evidence. Cut to the surprising truth with these eight tips that may make you rethink your email tactics.

How Google is Changing Long-Tail Search with Efforts Like Hummingbird

The Hummingbird update was different from the major algorithm updates like Penguin and Panda. In this video, Moz founder Rand Fishkin explains what effect that has on long-tail searches and how those continue to evolve.

(not provided) Global Report

We've heard the hype, but how big is the actual impact of (not provided) keywords? Tracking over 5,000 websites, the folks at SERPS.com display the latest numbers and charts, updated daily.

The Truly Monumental Guide to Building Online Communities

This beautiful guide details step by step the process of building your very own online community from the ground up. It's the perfect way to expand your reach and help future-proof your inbound marketing efforts.

You Can Increase Your Intelligence: 5 Ways to Maximize Your Cognitive Potential

Is your intelligence set for life, or can you actual make yourself smarter. Scientific American published these five actionable tips to improve your mental acumen and make yourself a more intelligent marketer.

The Advanced Guide to Sweepstakes

A well-run online sweepstakes can earn brand attention, mentions, community goodwill, press, and more. Discover your own sweepstakes powerhouse with this start-to-finish guide.

Google's Hummingbird Update

2013-09-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

Google's Hummingbird Update

Up coming SEO from Google

2013-05-22T21:20:00.002-07:00

What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?

Markup for Organization Logos

2013-05-16T04:49:00.001-07:00

English: Google Logo officially released on May 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

Using schema.org markup for organization logos

Posted: 15 May 2013 01:52 PM PDT

Webmaster level: all

Today, we’re launching support for the schema.org markup for organization logos, a way to connect your site with an iconic image. We want you to be able to specify which image we use as your logo in Google search results.

Using schema.org Organization markup, you can indicate to our algorithms the location of your preferred logo. For example, a business whose homepage is www.example.com can add the following markup using visible on-page elements on their homepage:


<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
  <a itemprop="url" href="http://www.example.com/">Home</a>
  <img itemprop="logo" src="http://www.example.com/logo.png" />
</div>

More...

Fear of Google

2013-01-17T23:10:00.001-08:00

Don’t Let FOG (Fear of Google) Kill All Your SEO – 3 Ways to Avoid Under-Optimization

By Elisa Gabbert, Published January 17, 2013

How to get customers for free

2012-09-24T23:53:00.003-07:00

How to get customers for free: Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz at GROW

Fishkin’s top 10 tips for generating inbound content:

Build a content strategy, not just a blog.
Be willing to fail repeatedly before you find what works.
Content doesn’t just mean blog posts, articles, and info graphics — be willing to get creative.
Put all your content on one domain, under one brand (no subdomains!).
Experiment with lots of potential networks.
Combine keyword research and tweetable titles.
Build relationships with the right influencers using three tools: Google Reader search, FollowerWonk, and findpeopleonplus.com.
Time things right by using tools to determine when your community is online such as tweriod.com and Google Insights for search.
Use del-author from Google and post to Google+ … that puts a picture by the search result for your content on Google, and as Fishkin says, users think ”picture = good, me click picture”
Don’t ignore advertising … SEOmoz uses retargeting because social ads get more effective the bigger your inbound brand grows.
Combine all these for the biggest impact......

$26K in safe bought on eBay

2012-02-16T20:12:00.001-08:00

Bartlett man finds $26,000 in safe bought on eBay

Finding more high-quality sites in search

2012-02-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

Finding more high-quality sites in search

2/24/2011 06:50:00 PM

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content-both good and bad-comes online all the time.

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking-a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries-and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites-sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites-sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on....

Page layout algorithm improvement

2012-02-15T00:34:00.001-08:00

Page layout algorithm improvement

1/19/12 | 3:00:00 PM

In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result....

17 search quality highlights: January

2012-02-14T23:44:00.000-08:00

Fresher results
Faster autocomplete.
Autocomplete spelling corrections
Better spelling full-page replacement
Better spelling corrections for rare queries
Improve detection of recurrent event pages
High-quality sites algorithm improvements
Cross-language refinements
English on Google Saudi Arabia - google.com.sa
Improved scrolling for Image Search
Improved image search quality
More relevant related searches
Blending of news results
Automatically disable Google Instant based on computer speed

17 search quality highlights: January

Algorithm Change by Google

2012-02-14T23:22:00.000-08:00

How to identify and fix Google Panda in 2012

Panda basics

* Panda is about dealing with bad content, not bad links. Bad content comes in different flavours: duplicate, weak, thin and template

* Panda acts like a domain wide penalty: your whole site is affected and your good stuff is dragged down by your bad stuff

* Web crawler accessibility issues affect how search engines see, and therefore assess, your content. Often, badly designed Information Architectures compound the problems with already weak content

Large sites that have many pages, templates content and lots of sub-categories are the most at risk. If you haven’t been monitoring and fixing your accessibility issues, as highlighted in Google Webmaster Tools, you are at risk....

Google Analytics: New features for your Dec campaigns

2011-12-22T22:43:00.000-08:00

	Monthly Product Update
	December 2011

Each month we work hard to improve your Analytics experience. Here is a quick snapshot of what we've been up to.

Site Speed Reports
Learn which pages on your site load slowly. Slow loading pages often cause visitors to leave in frustration. Check out the Site Speed reports and you can see average load time by page. Simply go to the "Content" section and click "Site Speed". Visit ourHelp Center for more details.

Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics
Understand more about your site's performance. Simply import information from Google Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics. Get SEO insights and understand how your site drives user engagement from Search (impressions, clicks, click through rate, and average position).
Here is a link to step by step instructions.

Expanded support for 40 Languages
Google Analytics is now available in 9 additional languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Croatian, Hindi, Latvian, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian and Ukrainian.

Tools for Google Analytics

Case Study: See how Fairmont Raffles Hotel simplified ecommerce reports across international sites. Tools that simplify international ecommerce reporting are particularly useful now that the holiday shopping season is in full swing.

Holiday Ecommerce Tips from Bill Kee, Product Manager for Google Analytics

Education & Resources

Reaching your Goals with Analytics
Is your website performing as well as it could be? Do you want to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns, including AdWords and other digital media? With so much data, it can be hard to know where to look first.

Here's a couple of resources to help you reach your goals with Analytics.

Learn how to Set up Goals in our help center

Review a short video: Google Analytics Engagement Goals (play time: less than 2 minutes)

Watch on demand - Webinar: reaching your goals

Happy Analyzing,
The Google Analytics Team

Was this information useful? Share your thoughts with us.

Google Analytics Resources: GA YouTube Channel | Help Center | Developer Hub | GA Blog

Happy Holidays

2011-12-22T22:18:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays

From Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

2011-11-17T20:18:00.000-08:00

Google Algorithm Change History

2011-11-01T03:52:00.000-07:00

Google Algorithm Change History

Each year, Google changes its search algorithm up to 500-600 times.

Galaxy Nexus

2011-10-19T02:27:00.001-07:00

Unwrapping Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy Nexus

More Google Wallet merchants are live

2011-10-18T03:11:00.000-07:00

More Google Wallet merchants are live. Now you can pay AND save in a single tap

10/17/2011 12:03:00 PM

Google Earth downloaded more than one billion times

2011-10-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

Requesting reconsideration of your site

2011-10-06T22:09:00.000-07:00

To request reconsideration of your site:

Sign in to Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
Make sure you have added and verified the site you want reconsidered.
Request reconsideration of your site.

Keyword stuffing

Continuing the AdSense in Your City journey

2011-10-02T21:25:00.001-07:00

The AdSense in Your City optimization team was back on the road again and recently hosted over 40 publishers in Walnut Creek, CA. Publishers in attendance learned about top optimization tips, our DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business product and the Google +1 button. Each publisher also received a 1:1 optimization session with one of our specialists.

One publisher shared his thoughts on the experience he had:
“I traveled over hours to attend this event and found it well worth it. The presentation was great and the one on one session was invaluable. Also, networking with other content publishers at the event added even more value to the experience. A must attend for anyone looking to optimize their websites and increase AdSense revenue.”

If you’d like to attend an event, we’re heading to Kansas City, MO next week and there are still a few spots open. We’ll also be going to Chicago, IL and Las Vegas, NV in the coming weeks. If you’re interested in learning more about AdSense optimization and meeting our team, please fill out our interest form.

We asked publishers to share what AdSense has given them.

Thanks to all of our publishers who came to Walnut Creek. We had a great time working with you and hearing your AdSense stories.

Posted by Courtney Yamada, AdSense Optimization Team

Introducing Google Wallet

2011-09-20T01:50:00.001-07:00

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2011-09-10T04:21:00.000-07:00

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

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Posted: 09 Sep 2011 10:07 AM PDT

Webmaster level: Intermediate

So you’re going global, and you need your website to follow. Should be a simple case of getting the text translated and you’re good to go, right? Probably not. The Google Webmaster Team frequently builds sites that are localized into over 40 languages, so here are some things that we take into account when launching our pages in both other languages and regions.

(Even if you think you might be immune to these issues because you only offer content in English, it could be that non-English language visitors are using tools like Google Translate to view your content in their language. This traffic should show up in your analytics dashboard, so you can get an idea of how many visitors are not viewing your site in the way it’s intended.)

More languages != more HTML templates

We can’t recommend this enough: reuse the same template for all language versions, and always try to keep the HTML of your template simple.

Keeping the HTML code the same for all languages has its advantages when it comes to maintenance. Hacking around with the HTML code for each language to fix bugs doesn’t scale–keep your page code as clean as possible and deal with any styling issues in the CSS. To name just one benefit of clean code: most translation tools will parse out the translatable content strings from the HTML document and that job is made much easier when the HTML is well-structured and valid.

How long is a piece of string?

If your design relies on text playing nicely with fixed-size elements, then translating your text might wreak havoc. For example, your left-hand side navigation text is likely to translate into much longer strings of text in several languages–check out the difference in string lengths between some English and Dutch language navigation for the same content. Be prepared for navigation titles that might wrap onto more than one line by figuring out your line height to accommodate this (also worth considering when you create your navigation text in English in the first place).

Variable word lengths cause particular issues in form labels and controls. If your form layout displays labels on the left and fields on the right, for example, longer text strings can flow over into two lines, whereas shorter text strings do not seem associated with their form input fields–both scenarios ruin the design and impede the readability of the form. Also consider the extra styling you’ll need for right-to-left (RTL) layouts (more on that later). For these reasons we design forms with labels above fields, for easy readability and styling that will translate well across languages.

click to enlarge

Also avoid fixed-height columns–if you’re attempting to neaten up your layout with box backgrounds that match in height, chances are when your text is translated, the text will overrun areas that were only tall enough to contain your English content. Think about whether the UI elements you’re planning to use in your design will work when there is more or less text–for instance, horizontal vs. vertical tabs.

On the flip side

Source editing for bidirectional HTML can be problematic because many editors have not been built to support the Unicode bidirectional algorithm (more research on the problems and solutions). In short, the way your markup is displayed might get garbled:

<p>ابةتث <img src="foo.jpg" alt=" جحخد"< ذرزسش!</p>

Our own day-to-day usage has shown the following editors to currently provide decent solutions for bidirectional editing: particularly Coda, and also Dreamweaver, IntelliJ IDEA and JEditX.

When designing for RTL languages you can build most of the support you need into the core CSS and use the directional attribute of the html element (for backwards compatibility) in combination with a class on the body element. As always, keeping all styles in one core stylesheet makes for better maintainability.

Some key styling issues to watch out for: any elements floated right will need to be floated left and vice versa; extra padding or margin widths applied to one side of an element will need to be overridden and switched, and any text-align attributes should be reversed.

We generally use the following approach, including using a class on the body tag rather than a html[dir=rtl] CSS selector because this is compatible with older browsers:

Elements:

<body class="rtl">
<h1><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><img alt="Google" src="http://www.google.com/images/logos/google_logo.png" /></a> Heading</h1>

Left-to-right (default) styling:

h1 {
  height: 55px;
  line-height: 2.05;
  margin: 0 0 25px;
  overflow: hidden;
}
h1 img {
  float: left;
  margin: 0 43px 0 0;
  position: relative;
}

Right-to-left styling:

body.rtl {
  direction: rtl;
}
body.rtl h1 img {
  float: right;
  margin: 0 0 0 43px;
}

(See this in action in English and Arabic.)

One final note on this subject: most of the time your content destined for right-to-left language pages will be bidirectional rather than purely RTL, because some strings will probably need to retain their LTR direction–for example, company names in Latin script or telephone numbers. The way to make sure the browser handles this correctly in a primarily RTL document is to wrap the embedded text strings with an inline element using an attribute to set direction, like this:

<h2>‫עוד ב- <span dir="ltr">Google</span>‬</h2>

In cases where you don’t have an HTML container to hook the dir attribute into, such as title elements or JavaScript-generated source code for message prompts, you can use this equivalent to set direction where ‫ and ‬‬ are Unicode control characters for right-to-left embedding:

<title>&#x202B;‫הפוך את Google לדף הבית שלך‬&#x202B;</title>

Example usage in JavaScript code:

var ffError = '\u202B' +'כדי להגדיר את Google כדף הבית שלך ב\x2DFirefox, לחץ על הקישור \x22הפוך את Google לדף הבית שלי\x22, וגרור אותו אל סמל ה\x22בית\x22 בדפדפן שלך.'+ '\u202C';

(For more detail, see the W3C’s articles on creating HTML for Arabic, Hebrew and other right-to-left scripts and authoring right-to-left scripts.)

It’s all Greek to me…

If you’ve never worked with non-Latin character sets before (Cyrillic, Greek, and a myriad of Asian and Indic), you might find that both your editor and browser do not display content as intended.

Check that your editor and browser encodings are set to UTF-8 (recommended) and consider adding a element and the lang attribute of the html element to your HTML template so browsers know what to expect when rendering your page–this has the added benefit of ensuring that all Unicode characters are displayed correctly, so using HTML entities such as é (é) will not be necessary, saving valuable bytes! Check the W3C’s tutorial on character encoding if you’re having trouble–it contains in-depth explanations of the issues.

A word on naming

Lastly, a practical tip on naming conventions when creating several language versions. Using a standard such as the ISO 639-1 language codes for naming helps when you start to deal with several language versions of the same document.

Using a conventional standard will help users understand your site’s structure as well as making it more maintainable for all webmasters who might develop the site, and using the language codes for other site assets (logo images, PDF documents) is handy to be able to quickly identify files.

See previous Webmaster Central posts for advice about URL structures and other issues surrounding working with multi-regional websites and working with multilingual websites.

That’s a summary of the main challenges we wrestle with on a daily basis; but we can vouch for the fact that putting in the planning and work up front towards well-structured HTML and robust CSS pays dividends during localization!

Posted by Kathryn Cullen, Google Webmaster Team

Display creative checklist - Google Inside AdWords

2011-09-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

Inside AdWords

Display creative checklist: building direct response ads

Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:48 PM PDT

If you’re designing display ads and have direct response goals, your ads need to catch the user’s eye, convey key information, and encourage them to click and explore your website. To get you started, we’ve put together the top ten tips learned through the collective experience of hundreds of Google AdWords account teams. These ten tips will help drive effective direct response marketing campaigns.

1. Call-to-Action
A call-to-action phrase or button encourages users to click on your ad and clearly lets them know what is coming next. While direct call-to-actions such as “Buy Now!“ may be common, they can also be too insistent. Using indirect call-to-actions like “Explore Now“ or short phrases such as “Travel Your Dream“ help encourage action without demanding a strong commitment.

2. Call-to-Action in Every Frame

Include a call-to-action & key message in every frame of your ad – especially the final frame. This ensures that you get across these two very important points no matter when the user's attention is drawn to your ad. When your animation stops, your ad will continue to compel action from users.

3. Company or Brand logo
Keep your brand or product logo in front of users in all frames. This will highlight your brand and can heighten credibility and increase your click-through rate. If this isn’t possible, include your logo in the final frame of animated ads to ensure your brand shows after animation has ended.

4. Pricing and Promotion
The more information on pricing that a user can gain from your display ad, the better. Consider providing promotional pricing to the audiences your ad is reaching. Discount offers supported by discount codes can help attract attention. If users don’t like the price or terms of your offer, they won’t click on your ad. Pre-qualifying users can save you the cost of that click.

5. Clear Value Proposition
Include a clear, compelling message highlighting the benefit of your product or service. If your ad is animated,

consider presenting a value proposition in each frame. Users should feel as though they are missing out on something by not clicking.

6. Sense of Urgency
Create a sense of urgency in your ad. Referring to deadlines or limits in quantity and availability can persuade users to give your message consideration right away.

7. Coordinate Colors & Images
Customize the color scheme of your ad to match your image or logo, and use easy-to-view colors for backgrounds and fonts. Extremely bright colors can be unpleasant and difficult to read. Using transparent PNG-format images can greatly improve aesthetics within your ad.

8. Balance Text & Images
Take advantage of both text and images to convey your message. Text and images are processed by different parts of the brain. Integrating both into your ad – harmoniously – can help you influence viewers cognitively and emotionally. Complementary text and images may help viewers remember your ad long after they have seen it.

9. Relevant Landing Page
Direct users to the most relevant landing page where the product or service is described in detail. The message on the page should match the message or promotion in your ad. This can have a positive impact on your users, conversion rate, and quality score. Remember to match the look & feel of your ad to the landing page.

Display Ad

Landing Page

10. Cast a Wide Net

Create your ad in every standard size or format to ensure that it reaches all of the highest performing corners of the Google Display Network. Some sites only accommodate specific formats and ad sizes. A full suite of ad sizes will improve your ad’s chances of appearing on those sites.

You can find these ten tips on the Display Creative Checklist website here.

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

2011-09-02T01:34:00.000-07:00

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

PDFs in Google search results

Posted: 01 Sep 2011 09:59 AM PDT

Webmaster level: All

Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. During this ambitious quest, we sometimes encounter non-HTML files such as PDFs, spreadsheets, and presentations. Our algorithms don’t let different filetypes slow them down; we work hard to extract the relevant content and to index it appropriately for our search results. But how do we actually index these filetypes, and—since they often differ so much from standard HTML—what guidelines apply to these files? What if a webmaster doesn’t want us to index them?

Google first started indexing PDF files in 2001 and currently has hundreds of millions of PDF files indexed. We’ve collected the most often-asked questions about PDF indexing; here are the answers:

Q: Can Google index any type of PDF file?
A: Generally we can index textual content (written in any language) from PDF files that use various kinds of character encodings, provided they’re not password protected or encrypted. If the text is embedded as images, we may process the images with OCR algorithms to extract the text. The general rule of the thumb is that if you can copy and paste the text from a PDF document into a standard text document, we should be able to index that text.

Q: What happens with the images in PDF files?
A: Currently the images are not indexed. In order for us to index your images, you should create HTML pages for them. To increase the likelihood of us returning your images in our search results, please read the tips in our Help Center.

Q: How are links treated in PDF documents?
A: Generally links in PDF files are treated similarly to links in HTML: they can pass PageRank and other indexing signals, and we may follow them after we have crawled the PDF file. It’s currently not possible to "nofollow" links within a PDF document.

Q: How can I prevent my PDF files from appearing in search results; or if they already do, how can I remove them?
A: The simplest way to prevent PDF documents from appearing in search results is to add an X-Robots-Tag: noindex in the HTTP header used to serve the file. If they’re already indexed, they’ll drop out over time if you use the X-Robot-Tag with the noindex directive. For faster removals, you can use the URL removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools.

Q: Can PDF files rank highly in the search results?
A: Sure! They’ll generally rank similarly to other webpages. For example, at the time of this post, [mortgage market review], [irs form 2011] or [paracetamol expert report] all return PDF documents that manage to rank highly in our search results, thanks to their content and the way they’re embedded and linked from other webpages.

Q: Is it considered duplicate content if I have a copy of my pages in both HTML and PDF?
A: Whenever possible, we recommend serving a single copy of your content. If this isn’t possible, make sure you indicate your preferred version by, for example, including the preferred URL in your Sitemap or by specifying the canonical version in the HTML or in the HTTP headers of the PDF resource. For more tips, read our Help Center article about canonicalization.

Q: How can I influence the title shown in search results for my PDF document?
A: We use two main elements to determine the title shown: the title metadata within the file, and the anchor text of links pointing to the PDF file. To give our algorithms a strong signal about the proper title to use, we recommend updating both.

If you want to learn more, watch Matt Cutt’s video about PDF files’ optimization for search, and visit our Help Center for information about the content types we’re able to index. If you have feedback or suggestions, please let us know in the Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Reorganizing internal vs.external backlinks

2011-09-01T04:04:00.001-07:00

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

Reorganizing internal vs. external backlinks

Posted: 31 Aug 2011 02:59 PM PDT

Webmaster level: All

Today we’re making a change to the way we categorize link data in Webmaster Tools. As you know, Webmaster Tools lists links pointing to your site in two separate categories: links coming from other sites, and links from within your site. Today’s update won’t change your total number of links, but will hopefully present your backlinks in a way that more closely aligns with your idea of which links are actually from your site vs. from other sites.

You can manage many different types of sites in Webmaster Tools: a plain domain name (example.com), a subdomain (www.example.com or cats.example.com), or a domain with a subfolder path (www.example.com/cats/ or www.example.com/users/catlover/). Previously, only links that started with your site’s exact URL would be categorized as internal links: so if you entered www.example.com/users/catlover/ as your site, links from www.example.com/users/catlover/profile.html would be categorized as internal, but links from www.example.com/users/ or www.example.com would be categorized as external links. This also meant that if you entered www.example.com as your site, links from example.com would be considered external because they don’t start with the same URL as your site (they don’t contain www).

Most people think of example.com and www.example.com as the same site these days, so we’re changing it such that now, if you add either example.com or www.example.com as a site, links from both the www and non-www versions of the domain will be categorized as internal links. We’ve also extended this idea to include other subdomains, since many people who own a domain also own its subdomains—so links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com.

Links for www.google.com	External links	Internal links
Previously categorized as...	www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/	www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/
Now categorized as...	www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html	scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/ www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/

If you own a site that’s on a subdomain (such as googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) or in a subfolder (www.google.com/support/webmasters/) and don’t own the root domain, you’ll still only see links from URLs starting with that subdomain or subfolder in your internal links, and all others will be categorized as external links. We’ve made a few backend changes so that these numbers should be even more accurate for you.

Note that, if you own a root domain like example.com or www.example.com, your number of external links may appear to go down with this change; this is because, as described above, some of the URLs we were previously classifying as external links will have moved into the internal links report. Your total number of links (internal + external) should not be affected by this change.

As always, drop us a comment or join our Webmaster Help Forum if you have questions!

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

News from Google

The Moz Top 10

Google's Hummingbird Update

Up coming SEO from Google

What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?

Markup for Organization Logos

Related articles

Fear of Google

How to get customers for free

How to get customers for free: Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz at GROW

$26K in safe bought on eBay

Bartlett man finds $26,000 in safe bought on eBay

Finding more high-quality sites in search

Page layout algorithm improvement

17 search quality highlights: January

Algorithm Change by Google

Panda basics

Google Analytics: New features for your Dec campaigns

Happy Holidays

From Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

Google Algorithm Change History

Galaxy Nexus

More Google Wallet merchants are live

Google Earth downloaded more than one billion times

Requesting reconsideration of your site

Continuing the AdSense in Your City journey

Introducing Google Wallet

Îñţérñåţîöñåļîžåţîöñ

Elements:

Left-to-right (default) styling:

Right-to-left styling:

Display creative checklist - Google Inside AdWords

Reorganizing internal vs.external backlinks