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Showing posts with label general tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label general tips. Show all posts

Monday, March 20, 2017

#NoHacked: A year in review

We hope your year started out safe and secure!
We wanted to share with you a summary of our 2016 work as we continue our #NoHacked campaign. Let’s start with some trends on hacked sites from the past year.

State of Website Security in 2016

First off, some unfortunate news. We’ve seen an increase in the number of hacked sites by approximately 32% in 2016 compared to 2015. We don’t expect this trend to slow down. As hackers get more aggressive and more sites become outdated, hackers will continue to capitalize by infecting more sites.
On the bright side, 84% webmasters who do apply for reconsideration are successful in cleaning their sites. However, 61% of webmasters who were hacked never received a notification from Google that their site was infected because their sites weren't verified in Search Console. Remember to register for Search Console if you own or manage a site. It’s the primary channel that Google uses to communicate site health alerts.

More Help for Hacked Webmasters


We’ve been listening to your feedback to better understand how we can help webmasters with security issues. One of the top requests was easier to understand documentation about hacked sites. As a result we’ve been hard at work to make our documentation more useful.
First, we created new documentation to give webmasters more context when their site has been compromised. Here is a list of the new help documentation:
Next, we created clean up guides for sites affected by known hacks. We’ve noticed that sites often get affected in similar ways when hacked. By investigating the similarities, we were able to create clean up guides for specific known type of hack. Below is a short description of each of the guides we created:
Gibberish Hack: The gibberish hack automatically creates many pages with non-sensical sentences filled with keywords on the target site. Hackers do this so the hacked pages show up in Google Search. Then, when people try to visit these pages, they’ll be redirected to an unrelated page, like a porn site. Learn more on how to fix this type of hack.
Japanese Keywords Hack: The Japanese keywords hack typically creates new pages with Japanese text on the target site in randomly generated directory names. These pages are monetized using affiliate links to stores selling fake brand merchandise and then shown in Google search. Sometimes the accounts of the hackers get added in Search Console as site owners. Learn more on how to fix this type of hack.
Cloaked Keywords Hack: The cloaked keywords and link hack automatically creates many pages with non-sensical sentence, links, and images. These pages sometimes contain basic template elements from the original site, so at first glance, the pages might look like normal parts of the target site until you read the content. In this type of attack, hackers usually use cloaking techniques to hide the malicious content and make the injected page appear as part of the original site or a 404 error page. Learn more on how to fix this type of hack.

Prevention is Key


As always it’s best to take a preventative approach and secure your site rather than dealing with the aftermath. Remember a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. You can read more about how to identify vulnerabilities on your site in our hacked help guide. We also recommend staying up-to-date on releases and announcements from your Content Management System (CMS) providers and software/hardware vendors.

Looking Forward

Hacking behavior is constantly evolving, and research allows us to stay up to date on and combat the latest trends. You can learn about our latest research publications in the information security research site. Highlighted below are a few specific studies specific to website compromises:
If you have feedback or specific questions about compromised sites, the Webmaster Help Forums has an active group of Googlers and technical contributors that can address your questions and provide additional technical support.

Posted by Wafa Alnasayan, Trust & Safety Analyst and Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations

Friday, January 27, 2017

Protect your site from user generated spam

As a website owner, you might have come across some auto-generated content in comments sections or forum threads. When such content is created on your pages, not only does it disrupt those visiting your site, but it also shows some content that you may not want to be associated with your site to Google and other search engines.


In this blog post, we will give you tips to help you deal with this type of spam in your site and forum.


Some spammers abuse sites owned by others by posting deceiving content and links, in an attempt to get more traffic to their sites. Here are a few examples:


Comments and forum threads can be a really good source of information and an efficient way of engaging a site's users in discussions. This valuable content should not be buried by auto-generated keywords and links placed there by spammers.


There are many ways of securing your site’s forums and comment threads and making them unattractive to spammers:


  • Keep your forum software updated and patched. Take the time to keep your software up-to-date and pay special attention to important security updates. Spammers take advantage of security issues in older versions of blogs, bulletin boards, and other content management systems.

  • Add a CAPTCHA. CAPTCHAs require users to confirm that they are not robots in order to prove they're a human being and not an automated script. One way to do this is to use a service like reCAPTCHA, Securimage and  Jcaptcha .
  • Block suspicious behavior. Many forums allow you to set time limits between posts, and you can often find plugins to look for excessive traffic from individual IP addresses or proxies and other activity more common to bots than human beings. For example, phpBB, Simple Machines, myBB, and many other forum platforms enable such configurations.

  • Check your forum’s top posters on a daily basis. If a user joined recently and has an excessive amount of posts, then you probably should review their profile and make sure that their posts and threads are not spammy.

  • Consider disabling some types of comments. For example, It’s a good practice to close some very old forum threads that are unlikely to get legitimate replies.
    If you plan on not monitoring your forum going forward and users are no longer interacting with it, turning off posting completely may prevent spammers from abusing it.

  • Make good use of moderation capabilities. Consider enabling features in moderation that require users to have a certain reputation before links can be posted or where comments with links require moderation.
    If possible, change your settings so that you disallow anonymous posting and make posts from new users require approval before they're publicly visible.
    Moderators, together with your friends/colleagues and some other trusted users can help you review and approve posts while spreading the workload. Keep an eye on your forum's new users by looking on their posts and activities on your forum.  

  • Consider blacklisting obviously spammy terms. Block obviously inappropriate comments with a blacklist of spammy terms (e.g. Illegal streaming or pharma related terms) . Add inappropriate and off-topic terms that are only used by spammers, learn from the spam posts that you often see on your forum or other forums. Built-in features or plugins can delete or mark comments as spam for you.

  • Use the "nofollow" attribute for links in the comment field. This will deter spammers from targeting your site. By default, many blogging sites (such as Blogger) automatically add this attribute to any posted comments.

  • Use automated systems to defend your site.  Comprehensive systems like Akismet, which has plugins for many blogs and forum systems are easy to install and do most of the work for you.




For detailed information about these topics, check out our Help Center document on User Generated Spam and comment spam. You can also visit our Webmaster Central Help Forum if you need any help.



Posted by Anouar Bendahou, Search Quality Strategist, Google Ireland

Monday, December 12, 2016

Enhancing property sets to cover more reports in Search Console

Since initially announcing property sets earlier this year, one of the most popular requests has been to expand this functionality to more sections of Search Console. Thanks to your feedback, we're now expanding property sets to more features!

Property sets help to show how your business is seen by Google across separate websites or apps. For example, if you have multiple international or brand-specific websites, and perhaps even an Android app, it can be useful to see changes of the whole set over time: are things headed in the expected direction? are there any outliers that you'd want to drill down into? Similarly, you could monitor your site's hreflang setup across different versions of the same website during a planned transition, such as when you move from HTTP to HTTPS, or change domains.

With Search Console's property sets, you can now just add any verified properties to a set, let the data collect, and then check out features like the mobile usability report, review your AMP implementation, double-check rich cards, or hreflang / internationalization markup, and more.


We hope these changes make it easier to understand your properties in Search Console. Should you have any questions - or if you just want to help others, feel free to drop by our Webmaster Help Forums.


Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Switzerland

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Building Indexable Progressive Web Apps

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are taking advantage of new technologies to bring the best of mobile sites and native applications to users -- and they’re one of the most exciting new ideas on the web. But to truly have an impact, it's important that they’re indexable and linkable. Every recommendation presented in this article is an existing best practice for indexability -- regardless of whether you're building a Progressive Web App or a simple static website. Nonetheless, we have collated these best practices to provide a checklist to guide you:

Make Your Content Crawlable

Why? Historically, websites would always generate or render their HTML on the server which is the simplest way to ensure your content is directly linkable. Web applications popularised the concept of client-side rendering in which content is updated dynamically on the page as the users navigates without requiring the page to be reloaded.

The modern approach is hybrid rendering, in which server-side rendering is used when a user navigates directly to a URL and client-side rendering is used after the initial page load for subsequent navigation and asynchronous requests.

Our server-side PWA sample demonstrates pure server-side rendering, while our hybrid PWA sample demonstrates the combined approach.

If you are unfamiliar with the server-side and client-side rendering terminology, check out these articles on the web read here and here.

Best Practice:

Use server-side or hybrid rendering so users receive the content in the initial payload of their web request.

Always ensure your URLs are independently accessible:

https://www.example.com/product/25/

The above should deep link to that particular resource.

If you can’t support server-side or hybrid rendering for your Progressive Web App and you decide to use client-side rendering, we recommend using the Google Search Console “Fetch as Google tool” to verify your content successfully renders for our search crawler.

Don’t:

Don't redirect users accessing deep links back to your web app's homepage.

Additionally, serving an error page to users instead of deep linking should also be avoided.


Provide Clean URLs

Why? Fragment identifiers (#user/24601/ or #!user/24601/) were an effective workaround for browsers to AJAX new content from a server without reloading the page. This design is known as client-side rendering.

However, the fragment identifier syntax isn’t compatible with some web tools, frameworks and protocols such as Facebook’s Open Graph protocol.

The History API enables us to update the URL without fragment identifiers while still fetching resources asynchronously and therefore avoiding page reloads -- it’s the best of both worlds. The AJAX crawling scheme (with its #! / escaped-fragment URLs) made sense at its time, but is now no longer recommended.

Our hybrid PWA and client-side PWA samples demonstrate the History API.

Best Practice:

Provide clean URLs without fragment identifiers (# or #!) such as:

https://www.example.com/product/25/

If using client-side or hybrid rendering be sure to support browser navigation with the History API.

Avoid:

Using the #! URL structure to drive unique URLs is discouraged:

https://www.example.com/#!product/25/

It was introduced as a workaround before the advent of the History API. It is considered a separate pattern to the purely # URL structure.

Don’t:

Using the # URL structure without the accompanying ! symbol is unsupported:

https://www.example.com/#product/25/

This URL structure is already a concept in the web and relates to deep linking into content on a particular page.


Specify Canonical URLs

Why? The best way to eliminate confusion for indexing when the same content is available under multiple URLs (be it the same or different domains) is to mark one page as the canonical, and all other pages that duplicate that content to refer to it.

Best Practice:

Include the following tag across all pages mirroring a particular piece of content:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/your-url/" />

If you are supporting Accelerated Mobile Pages be sure to correctly use its counterpart rel=”amphtml” instruction as well.

Avoid:

Avoid purposely duplicating content across multiple URLs and not using the rel="canonical" link element.

For example, the rel="canonical" link element can reduce ambiguity for URLs with tracking parameters.

Don’t:

Avoid creating conflicting canonical references between your pages.


Design for Multiple Devices

Why? It’s important that all your users get the best experience possible when viewing your website, regardless of their device.

Make your site responsive in its design -- fonts, margins, paddings, buttons and general design of your site should scale dynamically based on screen resolutions and device viewports.

Small images scaled up for desktop or tablet devices give a poor experience. Conversely, super high resolution images take a long time to download on mobile phones and may impact mobile scroll performance.

Read more UX for PWAs here.

Best Practice:

Use “srcset” attribute to fetch different resolution images for different density screens to avoid downloading images larger than the device’s screen is capable of displaying.

Scale your font size and line height to ensure your text is legible no matter the size of the device. Similarly ensure the padding and margins of elements also scale sensibly.

Test various screen resolutions using the Chrome Developer Tool’s Device Mode feature and Mobile Friendly Test tool.

Don’t:

Don't show different content to users than you show to Google. If you use redirects or user agent detection (a.k.a. browser sniffing or dynamic serving) to alter the design of your site for different devices it’s important that the content itself remains the same.

Use the Search Console “Fetch as Google” tool to verify the content fetched by Google matches the content a user sees.

For usability reasons, avoid using fixed-size fonts.


Develop Iteratively

Why? One of the safest paths to take when adding features to a web application is to make changes iteratively. If you add features one at a time you can observe the impact of each individual change.

Alternatively many developers prefer to view their progressive web application as an opportunity to overhaul their mobile site in one fell swoop -- developing the new web app in an isolated environment and swapping it with their existing mobile site once ready.

When developing features iteratively try to break the changes into separate pieces. For example, if you intend to move from server-side rendering to hybrid rendering then tackle that as a single iteration -- rather than in combination with other features.

Both approaches have their own pros and cons. Iterating reduces the complexity of dealing with search indexability as the transition is continuous. However, iterating might result in a slower development process and potentially a less innovative overhaul if development is not starting from scratch.

In either case, the most sensitive areas to keep an eye on are your canonical URLs and your site’s robots.txt configuration.

Best Practice:

Iterate on your website incrementally by adding new features piece by piece.

For example, if don’t support HTTPS yet then start by migrating to a secure site.

Avoid:

If you’ve developed your progressive web app in an isolated environment, then avoid launching it without checking the rel-canonical links and robots.txt are setup appropriately.

Ensure your rel-canonical links point to the real site and that your robots.txt configuration allows crawlers to crawl your new site.

Don’t:

It’s logical to prevent crawlers from indexing your in-development site before launch but don’t forget to unblock crawlers from accessing your new site when you launch.


Use Progressive Enhancement

Why? Wherever possible it’s important to detect browser features before using them. Feature detection is also better than testing for browsers that you believe support a given feature.

A common bad practice in the past was to enable or disable features by testing which browser the user had. However, as browsers are constantly evolving with features this technique is strongly discouraged.

Service Worker is a relatively new technology and it’s important to not break compatibility in the pursuit of progress -- it's a perfect example of when to use progressive enhancement.

Best Practice:

Before registering a Service Worker check for the availability of its API:

if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
...

Use per API detection method for all your website’s features.

Don’t:

Never use the browser’s user agent to enable or disable features in your web app. Always check whether the feature’s API is available and gracefully degrade if unavailable.

Avoid updating or launching your site without testing across multiple browsers! Check your site analytics to learn which browsers are most popular among your user base.


Test with Search Console

Why? It’s important to understand how Google Search views your site’s content. You can use Search Console to fetch individual URLs from your site and see how Google Search views them using the “Crawl > Fetch as Google“ feature. Search Console will process your JavaScript and render the page when that option is selected; otherwise only the raw HTML response is shown

Google Search Console also analyses the content on your page in a variety of ways including detecting the presence of Structured Data, Rich Cards, Sitelinks & Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Best Practice:

Monitor your site using Search Console and explore its features including “Fetch as Google”.

Provide a Sitemap via Search Console “Crawl > Sitemaps” It can be an effective way to ensure Google Search is aware of all your site’s pages.


Annotate with Schema.org structured data

Why? Schema.org structured data is a flexible vocabulary for summarizing the most important parts of your page as machine-processable data. This can be as general as simply saying that a page is a NewsArticle, or as specific as detailing the location, band name, venue and ticket vendor for a touring band, or summarizing the ingredients and steps for a recipe.

The use of this metadata may not make sense for every page on your web application but it’s recommended where it’s sensible. Google extracts it after the page is rendered.

There are a variety of data types including “NewsArticle”, “Recipe” & “Product” to name a few. Explore all the supported data types here.

Best Practice:

Verify that your Schema.org meta data is correct using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

Check that the data you provided is appearing and there are no errors present.

Don’t:

Avoid using a data type that doesn’t match your page’s actual content. For example don’t use “Recipe” for a T-Shirt you’re selling -- use “Product” instead.


Annotate with Open Graph & Twitter Cards

Why? In addition to the Schema.org metadata it can be helpful to add support for Facebook’s Open Graph protocol and Twitter rich cards as well.

These metadata formats improve the user experience when your content is shared on their corresponding social networks.

If your existing site or web application utilises these formats it’s important to ensure they are included in your progressive web application as well for optimal virality.

Best Practice:

Test your Open Graph markup with the Facebook Object Debugger Tool.

Familiarise yourself with Twitter’s metadata format.

Don’t:

Don’t forget to include these formats if your existing site supports them.


Test with Multiple Browsers

Why? Clearly from a user perspective it’s important that a website behaviors the same across all browsers. While the experience might adapt for different screen sizes we all expect a mobile site to work the same on similarly sized devices whether it’s an iPhone or an Android mobile phone.

While the web can be perceived as fragmented due to number of browsers in use around the world, this variety and competition is part of what makes the web such an innovative platform. Thankfully, web standards have never been more mature than they are now and modern tools enable developers to build rich, cross browser compatible websites with confidence.

Best Practice:

Use cross browser testing tools such as BrowserStack.com, Browserling.com or BrowserShots.org to ensure your PWA is cross browser compatible.


Measure Page Load Performance

Why? The faster a website loads for a user the better their user experience will be. Optimizing for page speed is already a well known focus in web development but sometimes when developing a new version of a site the necessary optimizations are not considered a high priority.

When developing a progressive web application we recommend measuring the performance of your page load speed and optimizing before launching the site for the best results.

Best Practice:

Use tools such as Page Speed Insights and Web Page Test to measure the page load performance of your site. While Googlebot has a bit more patience in rendering, research has shown that 40% of consumers will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load..

Read more about our web page performance recommendations and the critical rendering path here.

Don’t:

Avoid leaving optimization as a post-launch step. If your website’s content loads quickly before migrating to a new progressive web application then it’s important to not regress in your optimizations.


We hope that the above checklist is useful and provides the right guidance to help you develop your Progressive Web Applications with indexability in mind.

As you get started, be sure to check out our Progressive Web App indexability samples that demonstrate server-side, client-side and hybrid rendering. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out on our Webmaster Forums.


Posted by Tom Greenaway, Developer Advocate

Friday, March 11, 2016

Best practices for bloggers reviewing free products they receive from companies

Best practices for bloggers reviewing free products they receive from companies

As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers free products to review or give away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

  1. Use the nofollow tag where appropriate

    Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:
    1. the company’s site
    2. the company’s social media accounts
    3. an online merchant’s page that sells the product
    4. a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
    5. the company’s mobile app on an app store
    Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.
  2. Disclose the relationship

    Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire post.
  3. Create compelling, unique content

    The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you're a blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources.

For more information, please drop by our Google Webmaster Central Help Forum.

Posted by the Google Webspam Team

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

First Click Free update

First Click Free update

Around ten years ago when we introduced a policy called “First Click Free,” it was hard to imagine that the always-on, multi-screen, multiple device world we now live in would change content consumption so much and so fast. The spirit of the First Click Free effort was - and still is - to help users get access to high quality news with a minimum of effort, while also ensuring that publishers with a paid subscription model get discovered in Google Search and via Google News.

In 2009, we updated the FCF policy to allow a limit of five articles per day, in order to protect publishers who felt some users were abusing the spirit of this policy. Recently we have heard from publishers about the need to revisit these policies to reflect the mobile, multiple device world. Today we are announcing a change to the FCF limit to allow a limit of three articles a day. This change will be valid on both Google Search and Google News.

Google wants to play its part in connecting users to quality news and in connecting publishers to users. We believe the FCF is important in helping achieve that goal, and we will periodically review and update these policies as needed so they continue to benefit users and publishers alike. We are listening and always welcome feedback.

Questions and answers about First Click Free

Q: Do the rest of the old guidelines still apply?
A: Yes, please check the guidelines for Google News as well as the guidelines for Web Search and the associated blog post for more information.

Q: Can I apply First Click Free to only a section of my site / only for Google News (or only for Web Search)?
A: Sure! Just make sure that both Googlebot and users from the appropriate search results can view the content as required. Keep in mind that showing Googlebot the full content of a page while showing users a registration page would be considered cloaking.

Q: Do I have to sign up to use First Click Free?
A: Please let us know about your decision to use First Click Free if you are using it for Google News. There's no need to inform us of the First Click Free status for Google Web Search.

Q: What is the preferred way to count a user's accesses?
A: Since there are many different site architectures, we believe it's best to leave this up to the publisher to decide.

(Please see our related blog post for more information on First Click Free for Google News.)


Posted by John Mueller, Google Switzerland

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Five ways to grow your business this Small Business Week

Susan Brown, owner of Los Angeles gardening store Potted, recently updated her business listing on Google. Susan says, “Putting your business on Google lets people find you easily. Your directions are right there, your hours are right there, what you sell is right there.”

Thanks to her decision, Susan has seen more customers walk through her door: “So many of the customers that come in here find us on Google. As a small business, you want to use every opportunity to help your business grow.”

National Small Business Week is one of those opportunities. So from May 4-8, instead of three cheers, we’re giving you five—five simple ways to get your small business online and growing.

Celebrating National Small Business Week with Google

A handful of bright ideas and quick-fixes, all five ways are doable in a week or less and will help you throw a digital spotlight on your business all year round.

1. SHOW UP ON GOOGLE

Check to see how your business shows up on Google. Then, claim your listing so that customers can find the right info about your business on Google Search and Maps. When you claim your listing this week: You could be one of 100 randomly selected businesses to get a 360° virtual tour photoshoot—a $255 value.

2. LEARN FROM PROS & PEERS

Get business advice from experts and colleagues in the Google Small Business Community. They're ready to chat! When you visit or join this week: Share your tips for summertime business success and we'll feature your tip in front of an audience of 400K members.

3. WORK BETTER, TOGETHER:

With professional email, calendars, and docs that you can access anywhere, Google Apps for Work makes it easy for your team to create and collaborate. When you sign up this week you’ll receive 25% off Google Apps for Work for one year.

4. CLAIM YOUR DOMAIN:

With a custom domain name and website, Google Domains helps you create a place for your business on the web. When you sign up and purchase a .co, .com or .company domain this week you could be one of 1,500 randomly selected businesses to get reimbursed for the first year of registration.

5. GET ADVICE FROM AN ADVERTISING PRO:

Learn how you can promote your business online and work with a local digital marketing expert to craft a strategy that’s right for your business goals. When you RSVP this week you’ll get help from an expert who knows businesses like yours.

While these resources are available year-round, there’s no better time to embark on a digital reboot.

For more information, visit google.com/smallbusinessweek.

Wishing everyone a happy and productive Small Business Week!

Posted by Rachel Sterling, Product Marketing Manager, Google Small Business Team

PS: To join the conversation, use #5Days5Ways and #SBW15 on G+, Facebook or Twitter.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Are you a robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA”

reCAPTCHA protects the websites you love from spam and abuse. So, when you go online—say, for some last-minute holiday shopping—you won't be competing with robots and abusive scripts to access sites. For years, we’ve prompted users to confirm they aren’t robots by asking them to read distorted text and type it into a box, like this:
But, we figured it would be easier to just directly ask our users whether or not they are robots—so, we did! We’ve begun rolling out a new API that radically simplifies the reCAPTCHA experience. We’re calling it the “No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA” and this is how it looks:
On websites using this new API, a significant number of users will be able to securely and easily verify they’re human without actually having to solve a CAPTCHA. Instead, with just a single click, they’ll confirm they are not a robot.
A brief history of CAPTCHAs 

While the new reCAPTCHA API may sound simple, there is a high degree of sophistication behind that modest checkbox. CAPTCHAs have long relied on the inability of robots to solve distorted text. However, our research recently showed that today’s Artificial Intelligence technology can solve even the most difficult variant of distorted text at 99.8% accuracy. Thus distorted text, on its own, is no longer a dependable test.

To counter this, last year we developed an Advanced Risk Analysis backend for reCAPTCHA that actively considers a user’s entire engagement with the CAPTCHA—before, during, and after—to determine whether that user is a human. This enables us to rely less on typing distorted text and, in turn, offer a better experience for users.  We talked about this in our Valentine’s Day post earlier this year.

The new API is the next step in this steady evolution. Now, humans can just check the box and in most cases, they’re through the challenge.

Are you sure you’re not a robot?

However, CAPTCHAs aren't going away just yet. In cases when the risk analysis engine can't confidently predict whether a user is a human or an abusive agent, it will prompt a CAPTCHA to elicit more cues, increasing the number of security checkpoints to confirm the user is valid.
Making reCAPTCHAs mobile-friendly

This new API also lets us experiment with new types of challenges that are easier for us humans to use, particularly on mobile devices. In the example below, you can see a CAPTCHA based on a classic Computer Vision problem of image labeling. In this version of the CAPTCHA challenge, you’re asked to select all of the images that correspond with the clue. It's much easier to tap photos of cats or turkeys than to tediously type a line of distorted text on your phone.
Adopting the new API on your site

As more websites adopt the new API, more people will see "No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHAs".  Early adopters, like Snapchat, WordPress, Humble Bundle, and several others are already seeing great results with this new API. For example, in the last week, more than 60% of WordPress’ traffic and more than 80% of Humble Bundle’s traffic on reCAPTCHA encountered the No CAPTCHA experience—users got to these sites faster. To adopt the new reCAPTCHA for your website, visit our site to learn more.

Humans, we'll continue our work to keep the Internet safe and easy to use. Abusive bots and scripts, it’ll only get worse—sorry we’re (still) not sorry.

Posted by Vinay Shet, Product Manager, reCAPTCHA

Monday, September 8, 2014

Webmaster Academy now available in 22 languages

Webmaster level: Beginner

Today, the new Webmaster Academy goes live in 22 languages! New or beginner webmasters speaking a multitude of languages can now learn the fundamentals of making a great site, providing an enjoyable user experience, and ranking well in search results. And if you think you’re already familiar with these topics, take the quizzes at the end of each module to prove it :).

So give Webmaster Academy a read in your preferred language and let us know in the comments or help forum what you think. We’ve gotten such great and helpful feedback after the English version launched this past March so we hope this straightforward and easy-to-read guide can be helpful (and fun!) to everyone.

Let’s get great sites and searchable content up and running around the world.

Posted by Mary Chen, Webmaster Outreach

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Introducing the new Webmaster Academy

Webmaster level: Beginner

Webmaster Academy logo

Our Webmaster Academy is now available with new and targeted content!

Two years ago, Webmaster Academy launched to teach new and beginner webmasters how to make great websites. In addition to adding new content, we've now expanded and improved information on three important topics:
  • Making a great site that’s valuable to your audience (Module 1)
  • Learning how Google sees and understands your site (Module 2)
  • Communicating with Google about your site (Module 3)
If you often find yourself overwhelmed by the depth or breadth of our resources, Webmaster Academy will help you understand the basics of creating a website and having it found in Google Search. If you’re an experienced webmaster, you might learn something new too.

Enjoy, learn, and share your feedback!

Posted by Mary Chen, Webmaster Outreach Team

Thursday, February 27, 2014

3 tips to find hacking on your site, and ways to prevent and fix it



Google shows this message in search results for sites that we believe may have been compromised.You might not think your site is a target for hackers, but it's surprisingly common. Hackers target large numbers of sites all over the web in order to exploit the sites' users or reputation.

One common way hackers take advantage of vulnerable sites is by adding spammy pages. These spammy pages are then used for various purposes, such as redirecting users to undesired or harmful destinations. For example, we’ve recently seen an increase in hacked sites redirecting users to fake online shopping sites.

Once you recognize that your website may have been hacked, it’s important to diagnose and fix the problem as soon as possible. We want webmasters to keep their sites secure in order to protect users from spammy or harmful content.

3 tips to help you find hacked content on your site

  1. Check your site for suspicious URLs or directories
    Keep an eye out for any suspicious activity on your site by performing a “site:” search of your site in Google, such as [site:example.com]. Are there any suspicious URLs or directories that you do not recognize?

    You can also set up a Google Alert for your site. For example, if you set a Google Alert for [site:example.com (viagra|cialis|casino|payday loans)], you’ll receive an email when these keywords are detected on your site.

  2. Look for unnatural queries on the Search Queries page in Webmaster Tools
    The Search Queries page shows Google Web Search queries that have returned URLs from your site. Look for unexpected queries as it can be an indication of hacked content on your site.

    Don’t be quick to dismiss queries in different languages. This may be the result of spammy pages in other languages placed on your website.


    Example of an English site hacked with Japanese content.
  3. Enable email forwarding in Webmaster Tools
    Google will send you a message if we detect that your site may be compromised. Messages appear in Webmaster Tools’ Message Center but it's a best practice to also forward these messages to your email. Keep in mind that Google won’t be able to detect all kinds of hacked content, but we hope our notifications will help you catch things you may have missed.

Tips to fix and prevent hacking

  • Stay informed
    The Security Issues section in Webmaster Tools will show you hacked pages that we detected on your site. We also provide detailed information to help you fix your hacked site. Make sure to read through this documentation so you can quickly and effectively fix your site.

  • Protect your site from potential attacks
    It's better to prevent sites from being hacked than to clean up hacked content. Hackers will often take advantage of security vulnerabilities on commonly used website management software. Here are some tips to keep your site safe from hackers:

    • Always keep the software that runs your website up-to-date.
    • If your website management software tools offer security announcements, sign up to get the latest updates.
    • If the software for your website is managed by your hosting provider, try to choose a provider that you can trust to maintain the security of your site.

We hope this post makes it easier for you to identify, fix, and prevent hacked spam on your site. If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments, or drop by the Google Webmaster Help Forum.

If you find suspicious sites in Google search results, please report them using the Spam Report tool.

Posted by Megumi Hitomi, Japanese Search Quality Team

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

So long, 2013, and thanks for all the fish

Now that 2013 is almost over, we'd love to take a quick look back, and venture a glimpse into the future. Some of the important topics on our blog from 2013 were around mobile, internationalization, and search quality in general. Here are some of the most popular new posts from this year:

It's been a busy year here on the blog. We hope that our posts here have helped to make these - sometimes complex - topics a bit easier to understand. Is there anything you would have wanted more information about? Let us know in the comments!

Our Help Forum and office hours hangouts have also been a place for helpful, insightful, and sometimes controversial discussions. It's not always easy to find ways to improve websites, or to solve technical & usability issues that users post about, so we're extremely thankful to have such a fantastic group of Top Contributors that give advice and provide feedback there.



Where are we headed in 2014? Only time will tell, but I'm sure we'll see more information for the general webmaster, hard-core technical advice, ways to make mobile sites even better, rockin' Webmaster Tools updates, tips on securing your site & its connections, and more. Are you ready? Don't forget your towel & let's go!


On behalf of all the webmaster help forum guides, we wish you happy holidays & a great 2014.


Posted by Zineb Ait Bahajji and John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analysts

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Video: Creating a SEO strategy (with Webmaster Tools!)

Webmaster Level: Intermediate

Wondering how to begin creating an organic search strategy at your company? What’s a good way to integrate your company’s various online components, such as the website, blog, or YouTube channel? Perhaps we can help! In under fifteen minutes, I outline a strategic approach to SEO for a mock company, Webmaster Central, where I pretend to be the SEO managing the Webmaster Central Blog.


Fifteen-minute video to help your create the SEO strategy at your company

The video covers these high-level topics (and you can skip to the exact portion of the video that might be of interest):

Creating a SEO strategy Feel free to reference the slides as well.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead
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