Google Introduces Data Highlighter To Webmaster Tools For Event Data

Google has been lately giving a lot of importance to rich snippets in search results. Data Highlighter is a point-and-click tool that can be used by anyone authorized for your site in Google Webmaster Tools. No changes to HTML code are required.

 Instead, you just use your mouse to highlight and "tag" each key piece of data on a typical event page of your website.

To get started with Data Highlighter, visit Webmaster Tools, select your site, click the "Optimization" link in the left sidebar, and click "Data Highlighter".

As of now it's available in English only and for structured data about events, such as concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, shows, and festivals.

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2012/12/introducing-data-highlighter-for-event.html

Google Introduces A Special Search Blog And A New Preview Tool In Webmaster Tools

A Special Search Blog By Google:

Google today announced an official search blog http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/ . Google says that search is as old as humanity and they keep on upgrading their search algorithms for quality search results.

 This blog ‘Inside Search’ will be focused on search and Google will be sharing regular updates on our algorithms and features, as well as stories from the people who work to improve Google every day. According to Google this blog is a place where you can find regular updates on the intricacies of search and our team. We have more engineers working on search than any other product, and each one of us has stories to tell.

A glimpse inside the weekly search "quality launches" meeting

You can find the total list of Google Blogs on their blog directory link here:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/blog-directory.html#tab0

A blog focused on search is good news for all involved with search marketing and the search industry as such. As an SEO I think this is an indication of further importance being given to organic search by Google. Search has been as old as humanity and SEO is as old as search engines and as search will continue till there is existence of humankind , SEO will live as long as there are search engines. A special blog for Search is one more step ahead to prove this and facilitate this.

Google Adds The Option of Instant Preview Under Labs in Webmaster Tools

Image via CrunchBase

For example as below:

When the search results are displayed the search listing has a magnifying glass icon on the RHS which when clicked shows the preview of the site as below:

Once you’ve enabled Instant Preview mode, you can also use your arrow key to move down through the other results. As you select one, it will be highlighted with a blue background. The preview will change to show the highlighted page:

You can go to http://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews/#a and try it now.

Once you’ve enabled Instant Preview mode, you can also use your arrow key to move down through the other results.

Instant Previews are page snapshots that are displayed in search results. In general, Google generates these preview images at crawl time. If the Instant Preview looks different from what users see, it could indicate Google is having difficulty crawling your page.

Using Google Webmaster Tools Appropriately For SEO

I have been using the Google  webmaster tools since time immemorial now, but using them appropriately for analyzing the website from the SEO perspective is always an ongoing learning process. Google keeps on adding valuable features to the tools and keeps on making it more useful to webmasters and SEOs.

Maile Ohye – The Developer Programs Tech Lead from Google explains this very clearly in the following video.

The Webmaster Tools features she has explained in the video are summarized as follows:

• Sign Up For Email Forwarding In Webmaster Tools in Message Centre 
• Check For Search Queries 
• Use Keywords To Target Content 
• Reduce Duplicates Through HTML Suggestions And URL Parameter Handling 
• Diagnose Crawl Errors 
• Prioritize Content Through Internal Links 
• Verify Access Through Fetch As Googlebot 
• Use Site Performance To Improve Speed 

View the video for a detailed explanation :)

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