Yeah, just few hours ago I got a mail from Google Apps team. In 2010 they are planning to phase out support for several old browsers that are not supported even by their own manufacturers. And that includes Internet Explorer 6. This is what they have said in the email:
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team
So if you have any webpage created with Google Apps then I hope you have no issues with the old browser users having problem with your site. Besides it will show them message to update their browsers. I know as a webmaster you would like to reach as many readers as possible. But still if someone wants to use IE6 now, I am not going to take the responsibility to show a good webpage. IE6 really sucks!
Have a look at this fun quiz from Google for webmasters. The questions are all objective multiple choices and are based on common queries in Google Webmaster Help Forum. I checked the questions & they have some pretty good questions about the problems that you face regularly as a webmaster like on multiple domains & ccTLDs, url changes or robots.txt etc. You can take the quiz till this January 27.
The answers are not available right away. Google will write a follow up blog post in their webmaster blog with the correct answers. Don’t forget to save your answers now before submitting. Then you can realize if you are making any common mistakes.
First thing first, this is only for Indian sites. Google India has opened a Health Clinic for your site. Actually in this service Google Search Quality team will review some handpicked sites. They will analyze & suggest you improvements so that you can find out what is going wrong & rectify accordingly to get better visibility in Google search results. You need to send your request for free site analysis through this form. The applications will be accepted till this 20th January. Remember you must have your site registered in Google Webmaster Tools & your site should meet Google webmaster guidelines. So hurry up & see whether you can get a free site check up from Google
Yeah! That’s true for all present Google Webmaster Tools users who have verified their sites using meta tag method. The meta tag generated for the verification process used to depend on the email address of the user’s Google account. So if you change your email address, all the sites that you have verified will become unverified. But just a few days ago Google came out with a tweak on the verification process. From now on, the new meta tags generated for site verification will not depend on the email & will remain same whether you change your email address or not.
So if you have changed your email address in Google account in the mean time, check back Google Webmaster Tools. If you want to be safe from email change, you can use the new verification process. By the way, sites verified using old verification method will continue to work.
They have made a change too in verification by HTML file. Before, if your site showed any other HTTP error except 404 for non-existent url, you couldn’t verify your site using HTML file upload. Though, if a server is properly configured it will always show 404 error for non-existent urls, still lots of sites were having problem for this reason. So, Google have removed checking for non-existent urls from verification process. Now you just have to upload the HTML file to your site without any modification. Google will check if the content is okay in the file. And if it is same, you have a successful verification. That’s all
Google has just released a update on Webmaster Tools called Summer Shine. I was going through it. There are some tweaks in user visibility & navigation, but more importantly two new useful features for you.
Thought, you have got sitelinks of your site in Google. You may want to remove a particular one like email contact page link to avoid more spam. Now you can do that. There is a option to block non-homepage sitelinks. The situation may arise quite seldom. But its better to have some option in hand.
Next one is good for collaborative sites. If another webmaster has submitted a URL removal request of your site, you can view them. And if it was a mistake, you can undo it.
Google engineer Matt Cutts is doing a series of video interviews lately especially on Google SEO. Have you wondered where to go to ask him a question for the interview? Here is the link! Go there & post your question for July 2009. Just not only SEO, you can ask him anything on Google products too. Questions should be generic i.e. not a site-specific. Moreover you can vote for other questions whether you like it or dislike. And help them to be popular enough to be chosen for the video.
Google Webmaster Tools has launched a new tool called Change of address with its brand new look. If you are moving your site from old domain to a new one, it can be of much help. Using this service you can reflect the change in Google index faster & make the transition smoother for your users. You can find the tool under Site Configuration option of the respective site. You have to have both old & new domain verified to use this service. So there is no problem of unauthorized access.
There is step by step instruction of how Google recommend you to move your site to a new domain. It can remove any complication on your part. So if you are planning to migrate, don’t forget to check it to notify Google about your new url & retain your position on their search engine.
Today when I entered Google Webmaster Tools, I saw a message like “We’re changing! Check out our new look!“ And there was a link to activate the new interface. Wow! when I checked it, it looked simpler & easier to navigate. Here is the new dashboard screenshot:
Features are now grouped together into three main categories:
Site configuration – You provide your site information to Google here
Your site on the web -You can find Google data about your site
Diagnostics -You can find any reports about crawling your site
Look at the below screenshot to get a clear idea what options are grouped under those categories:
This interface has really impressed me. By the way if you have any problem finding a feature in the new design, Google support has created a page to help you out. Every feature has its new navigation path listed. It will be quite easy for you.
So what are you waiting for? Click here to go the new interface directly.
Google has just released Google Services for Websites – an all in one webmaster service package that can easily be implemented by the hosting providers in their own service. It is an enhanced version of the Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program that was released last year.
If you own a hosting company or web publishing service then you can sign up for it. It will enable your customers to access Google webmaster services from your control panel directly. It now includes:
Google Webmaster tools to drive traffic
Custom Search or Google Site Search to enhance search capabilities for the sites
Adsense to monetize sites
There is some incentive for you. You can earn referral fees when a customer creates an Adsense account that generates revenue or upgrades to Google Site Search.
There has been a talk on the increasing importance of branded search results in Google. I have found this useful video about Matt Cutts talking on this new discussion. Listen to this & you will have a clear idea about Google’s point of view on branding search results.
It’s pretty assuring to know that Google doesn’t rely on branding that much. Everyone of us cannot have brand. But what we can have is high quality content
