What’s a Googlebot?

Googlebot is Google’s search bot software used to collect documents from the Internet to create a searchable index for the search engine. The process of discovering updated and new websites is called “crawling.” Also called spider or crawler, Googlebot uses computer programs to find out which sites to crawl, how many pages in a site to fetch, and how often a site should be crawled.

Why is Fetch as Googlebot useful?

Fetch as Googlebot allows you to eliminate the guesswork whenever you need to analyze how Google reads your site. Since the tool identifies content that can and cannot be crawled, you can easily pinpoint which pages need improvement. Troubleshooting, therefore, will be done more quickly.

The new tool also looks at your malware details, and then shows you snippets of malicious code. This is great because you’re now able to know if your site has been hacked with undesired and malicious content.

For example, let’s say you’re the owner of example.com. After looking up your website on Google search, you’re surprised to find that your site shows up for spammy keywords like “male enhancement” or other terms you never included in the source code. If your site is linked to Webmaster Tools, you can use Fetch as Googlebot to fully understand what Google is seeing on your site exactly. The tool lets you see the fetched page’s content, including the word “male enhancement” and such spammy terms. Things like this happen when someone hacks into your website and inserts malicious content, hiding it so that it’s visible to Googlebot only.

Ultimately, Fetch as Googlebot lets you know if the server is returning something else to Googlebot than what normal users see. However, know that the tool doesn’t necessarily show content that Google extracts from your website. For example, if a page contains JavaScript, what you’ll see is the raw JavaScript code, and not the rendered view that appears on the browser.

How to Use

Using Fetch as Googlebot is very simple. On your Webmaster Tools homepage, choose a specific site and then click the Fetch as Googlebot link under Diagnostics. Then just indicate the URL in the text box and click the Fetch button. It may take awhile for Googlebot to return the results since the pages are fetched in real time. To see the progress, click the Refresh button.

There is no telling how many benefits Google Boost offers. Now, there’s even more reason to celebrate as Google Boost has just entered the mobile search market. Mobile Web users are increasing by the minute, and it only makes sense that Google has tapped into the mobile community.

Mobile users are fast becoming the most dominant users of the Internet. In Japan, where technology is king, the number of mobile Web users almost equaled the number of computer-based Internet users in 2007. It is very likely that there are more mobile Web users today than computer-based ones.

On the other hand, many webmasters still don’t recognize the importance of having a mobile-friendly website. For those not in the know, regular websites tend to get messed up when viewed on a cell phone. This is exactly why Google is encouraging website owners to consider creating a site geared towards mobile users.

Creating a mobile-friendly website isn’t very hard, after all. All you have to do is look at Googlebot-Mobile the same way as you would treat regular search engine crawlers. Eventually, Google will take care of the conversion.

At the end of the day, it’s your call. You decide whether or not it’s about time to get a mobile website. Just remember that mobile Web is fast becoming a huge business opportunity. Phone screens may be small, but people don’t seem to mind.

Now, Google didn’t completely combine Analytics and Webmaster Tools together, but you now have the ability to link both accounts. Just pull up your Webmaster Tools page and click on the drop down button for Manage. From there, select the profile of your choice, hit “Save” and voila! You can now view and access Analytics profiles from your Webmaster Tools page.

As of now, all this integration does is add a link for your Analytics Referring Pages under the “Link to your site” page in Webmaster Tools. The incorporation doesn’t exactly show all your Analytics data within Webmaster Tools, just direct link to the report.

Wait, there’s more. Google has made one other Webmaster Tools update: rounding up the numbers in the Search Query tool to the nearest thousand.

It seems Google’s engineers love seeing many zeroes. This update results in a prettier look since you’ll be seeing a lot of nice round numbers. For instance, 237,000 impressions will now be 240,000 impressions.

According to Google itself, this improvement promotes a less confusing experience. It seems Google has our best interest in mind, but this move actually raised a furor among webmasters. They believe that this update is more of a blunder than an improvement. After all, wouldn’t it make more sense to provide accuracy than estimates and visual appeal?

Basically, OnePass lets online publishers charge for content that individuals view on a laptop, desktop, tablet PC or mobile phone.

Publishers are allowed to keep most of the income generated by the subscription sales. The subscriptions can be offered in the form of limited-time access, pay-per-article, and long-term subscriptions.

Of course, the service isn’t free. Google gets a 10% cut out of every transaction, and this may be where Google beats its arch rival since Apple will be getting a 30% slice.

OnePass provides publishers the following options:

- The freedom to set a subscription price
- Ability to set the length of the subscription
- Pay for every piece of content
- Allow access to existing customers via a coupon service
- Trial passes for a pre-defined amount of time or visits
- Renewal services
- A system that lets you follow purchases via iOS or Android apps

Google added that they will provide publishers’ their customers’ name, email address and post code, although customers can opt not to share their information. Currently, Google’s OnePass is available to publishers in the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, and the United States.

In an effort to further fight against content farms, Google has updated its algorithm yet again. This time, the Internet search company isn’t very forgiving.

There are two updates actually, the first of which was released in early February and is called the “scraper” algorithm. Designed to prevent low quality scraper sites from entering Google’s index, this update has affected a number of websites right after the algorithm was released. Some webmasters complained about losing 40-60% of their traffic. What’s more is that these same webmasters claimed to post only in-depth content, and that the real scraper sites are still out there and ranking even higher.

According to Google personality Matt Cutts, on the other hand, the scraper site crackdown would affect just 2% of queries and 0.5% of search results, which are so little that people would hardly notice any change. Cutts added that the update in fact aims to prioritize websites with unique content instead of those that copy it.

Soon after the scraper clean-up, Google released its second algorithm update: the “farmer” update. While it’s apparent that the update was designed to go after content farms, note that Google didn’t exactly use the phrase “content farm” when the news was announced. According to Google, the algorithm change has affected 11% of search queries, which is, needless to say, very significant. On a side note, Google mentioned that Google Chrome has an add-on that allows users to block certain search results. Blocked websites are sent to Google, and then evaluated to figure out whether or not they’re content farms of scraper sites.

Previously, no one really had an exact definition of what a content farm is. Thanks to the algorithm change, Google has made drawn the line between fair content marketing and unethical content farming.

October 2010, Google released Google Boost as an advertising solution that would allow local business owners to connect with customers in their area. Boost takes information from Place pages and turns it into text based ads which appear on Google search and Google Maps. The good news to users is that Boost has just been released to the mobile market in order to tap into the increasing number of smartphone users.

According to some information brought up at a Google marketing discussion, mobile users are quickly becoming the most common users on the net.

In Japan, the majority of Internet page views are already mobile, and a surprisingly small percentage is from a PC. It’s safe to assume that this trend will make its way to the US and other countries around the world. Too many people have left this market untapped. And too few sites construct a mobile friendly version of their site for a group of users that are about to become the majority.

Google is suggesting you take the time to decide if you think your site needs a mobile friendly version or not. Google also has a system in place to convert your site automatically to make it more mobile friendly. All you need to do is treat Googlebot-Mobile like you would any unknown user-agent, and Google will attempt the conversion.

Ultimately the decision is up to you. Phone screens are pretty small, but it seems like users don’t really care that much. They are probably used to using their phone to surf the net with pages that aren’t mobile optimized. Eventually it’s very likely that most users will have phones that can view normal page content just fine even on their smaller screens. This means that making mobile friendly pages might not be as big a priority in the future as it is now. After all, the smaller screen should be the compromise users make for having mobile Internet.

View Google’s thinkmobile live streaming market discussion as well as other mobile user information and facts at this page to learn more.

Either way, now your Analytics profiles can be viewed from within Webmaster tools and you can easily access a couple Analytics features as well.

They have the integration set up with links littered around both places. First off, you can access your Analytics Referring Pages from the Links to your site page within Webmaster tools.

Also, you can access the Analytics Dashboard directly from Webmaster tools by using the toolbar at the top of the page. In order to link the two accounts go to the Webmaster tools page and click the Manage drop down menu. Then select the profile you’d like to use and click Save.

Another Webmaster tools update has also been released that rounds your numbers in the Search Queries tool to the closest thousand. This would make your results prettier looking by essentially having all the numbers show up as a set of nice round numbers. For example 246,000 is now 250,000, or 12,100 is now just 12,000.

By some sort of strange logic Google has announced that it makes the results less confusing to users! Webmasters are in an uproar and we’re sure this update will be rethought because when watching analytics people will always choose accuracy over anything else.

Many webmasters are saying this is definitely a step in the wrong direction, and that Google is now dumbing down Webmaster tools for no reason.

Among the options for publishers are…

• Ability to set the subscription price
• Allow access to current customers through a coupon service
• Ability to set any length subscription
• Renewal services
• Pay per piece of content
• Trial passes for a limited amount of time or visits.
• And even a system to allow for purchases via Android or iOS apps.

Of course Google isn’t just giving this service away; they take a small 10% slice of every transaction. Which is fairly modest considering that Apple offers a similar service and takes a 30% cut. This is a great service from Google, it offers something that publishers around the Net need.

The first of two algorithm updates has been quietly dubbed the “Scraper” algorithm and is intended to block low quality scraper sites from showing up in the Google index. Immediately after it released some webmasters complained that their traffic had dropped as much as 40-60%. These same webmasters also claim to have in depth content, and point out that the real content farms and scraper sites have either maintained or risen in ranks.

Google’s Matt Cutts stated that the algorithm is very targeted and only 2% of queries were changed in some way and only 0.5% of the results would change enough that anyone would notice. He also stated that the algorithm is designed to elevate those sites which created the original content over those sites who republish it.

Later in the month Google released its second algorithm update dubbed the “Farmer” update that is believed to specifically target content farms. Google has stated that this update impacts 11.8% of queries which is pretty significant compared to most updates in the algorithm.

Google announced that this update penalizes content farms, but they won’t confirm that content farms are the main target. However, Google did mention their Chrome extension allows users to create a personal block list right from their search results. When a site gets blocked by a user, data is sent to Google and is then used to evaluate which sites might be scraper sites or content farms.

When Google released the “Farmer” update, they compared the new results with the most commonly blocked sites and found that 84% of those sites were affected by the new algorithm. Not only is Google using this to confirm the effectiveness of their update, but they also show how good users are at identifying sites that use spammy SEO tactics to rank well.

This may leave you wondering how exactly Google is defining a content farm. In the past this has been a very loosely used term with no clear definition. However, thanks to this update we can see by example who Google feels has made the cut and who has taken a big ranking hit and been labeled a…

Farmer:

• Mahalo.com
• EzineArticles (all article directories for that matter)
• HubPages.com
• Business.com
• faqs.org
• Wisegeek.com

The Other Guys:

• Facebook
• EBAY
• Wikis (wikipedia, Google Knol)
• YouTube
• Instructrables & Ehow (both are VERY surprising but were not touched)
• Yahoo Answers (very surprising here)
• Etsy.com (comparison shopping)
• Amazon

If your site was hit by either one of these updates you should consider making a big push to create original high quality content and replace any auto generated content.

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