Do you have a website? Do you have a Google Webmasters account? If not, you need one!  This document outlines how to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and explains a few of the basics.

Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters and sign up for an account.

You will see the Home page.  Scroll down and click the “Add a site” button, and add your website address.  Then, under “sites” click on the domain you just created.

You will now see the dashboard.  It is an overview of several tools:  Top search queries, Crawl errors, links to your site, keywords, sitemaps – you can click “More” under any section to see more information.

When you are done exploring the dashboard, look to the left.  There are 4 main navigation sections: Site Configuration, Your site on the Web, Diagnostics, and Labs.

First, click the + sign next to Site Configuration and go to  Settings.  You can see the current crawl settings and change them here.

Now, click the + sign next to Diagnostics.  Here, you will find HTML Suggestions.  Here, you can get a good look at how many pages that are indexed have duplicate meta descriptions, duplicate title tags, etc. It’s a good idea to look at this section often and see what can be fixed when you notice new items have appeared.

Last, click the + sign next to Labs.  When you use the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool, and enter any page from your site, Googlebot will show you exactly how it sees that page.  Click on the word “Success” next to any fetched page to see the results.

Under Site Performance, you will see a performance overview of your site.  It takes several days for this page to update after it takes a reading, you may have to give it a week in between updates.  Scroll down and you will see it offers page speed suggestions for improving your website load time.

If you have any questions about the other sections in Google Webmasters that I did not discuss, submit them here!

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

You may be interested to know that you can customize the way you see your google search results by signing up for a Google Account.  If you have Gmail, or if you’re a webmaster or web marketer, you likely already have one.

After you’ve signed up for your Google account, you’ll want to look over in the upper right hand corner.   You’ll see a link that says Settings, which presents you with two more choices when selected:  Search Settings, and Google Account settings.

Click on Search Settings, and you will see  a page which lets you configure how you’d like to search Google.  It’s pretty standard:

• Interface Language / Search Language: Select your language preferences.
• SafeSearch Filtering: If you’re at work you definitely want to keep the SafeSearch filter on!
• Number of Results: I always view 100 results at a time.  It saves me the hassle of clicking next… next… next… endlessly.
• Results Window: You may find it convenient to open results in a new window.  I often do.  And if you don’t like it you can change it back later!
• Query Suggestions: Because my job involves web marketing and data analysis, I opt to keep the suggestions on, as it can be very useful to see what Google thinks are associated with my search terms.
• Search Wiki: this basically lets you give an up arrow to certain pages and domains in search results so that if your domain or page shows up for that search term, it will show up on top of the first page, making it easy to find if you’re doing keyword research or some other marketing research.  However, if you just want to see what comes up naturally, you have to turn it off, as everything you move up to the top will be there for that keyword search in the future, unless you turn it off or move it back down again.

The next thing you’ll want to do is go back to settings in the upper right hand corner, and this time, you’re going to customize your Google Account Settings. Here, you will see numerous options.  I’ll discuss a few of the basics here.

The first thing you should do is click on “Change password recovery options” and make sure that, if you should ever forget your password, you will be able to reset it.

Next, over on the left, click on Edit Profile.  Fill out as much information as you are comfortable with, and select whether your full name should be searchable.  At the bottom, you will find a bio area, as well as a Links area to link to your websites.  (if you’re really cool, you’ll link to GreenWebDesign.com and/or 50StatesClassifieds.com! 

If you have a Picasa, Flickr, or other photo service account, click on the Photos tab to link it to your Google Account.

Back at the main Google Accounts page (which you can always find by going back to http://www.google.com/accounts), scroll down to My Products.

You may already have some products showing here, such as: AdSense, Analytics, Checkout, Google Affiliate Network, Knol, Notebook, Picasa, Sites, Voice, Webmaster Tools, AdWords, Blogger, Docs, Health, Local Business Center, Orkut, Profiles, Subscribed Links, Wave, youTube, Alerts, Calendar, Gmail, iGoogle, Merchant Center, Page Creator, Reader, Talk, and Web History.

If you don’t have any products, you should “Try Something New”, where you can click on things you haven’t signed up for yet.  Try some stuff out and see how it goes!

The rest of this section, you can explore on your own!  Feel free to ask specific questions if you get stuck on something.

Ways to search Google more effectively using custom queries:

When you’re searching for something really specific, try putting quotation marks around it.  For example, “Green Web Design”.

If you’re looking for something and the search results are too broad, try a plus sign!  For example, Green+Web+Design

If you read something on a particular website, but can’t remember how to find it again, try searching just in that domain.  For example, in google, type this into the search box:  site:greenwebdesign.com marketing and you’ll see that you only get results from GreenWebDesign.com which contain the word marketing.

If you’d like to find some pages that are similar to a page, enter this into the search box:

related:http://www.greenwebdesign.com/

Webmasters: If you would like to find out when Google last visited a page on your website, you can do so by entering the following text into the search box at google.com:

cache:http://www.greenwebdesign.com/  OR  cache:http://www.greenwebdesign.com/index.html

There are many other ways you can search using custom search queries, but these will probably be more than enough for most people.

You’ll also find lots of fun Google Goodies at:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

Google announced today at the Computer History Museum that it will be rolling out real-time search in the next several days, as well as the ability to search by voice, location, and sight from a mobile device.  They also announced that they are extending their voice search capabilities on Android devices to recognize Japanese, as well as allowing you to search for “what’s nearby”. Also demonstrated was Google Goggles, a visual search application that lets you search for objects using images rather than words, using your camera phone.  Via Google’s Blog:

First, we’re introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited!  I can’t wait to try some of these features out. For more information on the mobile features, visit the Google Mobile Blog.

Have I mentioned I love Google?  What other search engine takes the time to make their webmasters make useful, high quality videos for other webmasters?  In this video, Google’s Eric Higgins shares some very easy to implement tips for webmasters whose websites utilize the PHP programming language.  Thanks Eric!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sibg0T3wKs4

For more information:

http://code.google.com/speed

Posted by maureen on April 01, 2008 at 10:46 AM

Click Here for the entire story from the original website

A Monthlong Magnification of Google: the Company, the Technologies, and the Extracurricular Activities

Bob logs onto the internet with his laptop after dinner. He checks his Gmail and reads a message about his sister’s upcoming heart surgery, a note from his boss about a new business pitch the following morning and receives a reminder about his wife’s birthday next week.

He Googles “watches” and selects one from the search results he knows his wife will love. Quickly, he purchases the watch for his wife, using Google Checkout.

Then his friend catches him on Google Talk and they chat about the college football game they will be attending on Saturday, what time they will be at the tailgate and who is responsible for bringing what food.

Bob starts to feel guilty for wasting time, so he logs into his Google Docs and starts refining the presentation for the new business pitch.

Then he remembers that he isn’t quite sure how to get to the meeting from his home. He types his home address and destination address into Google Maps, prints off a copy and logs off the internet to watch his favorite show at 8 o’clock.

What does Google know about Bob?

• His IP address (1)
• What time he is likely to use the internet (1)
• What time he is likely to log off the internet (1)
• His name (2)
• His sister’s name (2)
• His sister’s email address (2)
• The time and date of his sister’s upcoming heart surgery (2)
• A heart conditions runs in his family (2)
• His wife’s name (2)
• His wife’s birthday (2)
• What type of jewelry, and specifically watch, he is interested in and likely to buy (1)
• His credit type, number and CVC/Security Code (3)
• How fast he types (3)
• The amount he is likely to spend on a piece of women’s jewelry (3)
• The seller that he purchased the watch from (3)
• The status of the shipment of the watch (3)
• Which college football game he will be at on Saturday, i.e. his physical movements (4)
• Which college team he supports (4)
• What time he will be at the tailgate (4)
• What items he will be responsible for bringing, and thus, purchasing (4)
• Who he works for (2)
• The name of the company he will be pitching (2)
• The name and email address of his boss (2)
• The contents of his presentation (5)
• His home address (6)
• The company’s address (6)

What does Google know about you?

Now that you’ve read the news, why not check out the Classifieds?