A new look for our Webmaster Help Group

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Googlers strongly believe in
dogfooding
our own products. We manage our work schedules with
Google Calendar,
publish our blogs on Blogger, and
store scads of documentation on
Google Sites. So, ever since we
launched our first Webmaster Help Group, we’ve been using
Google Groups to facilitate
conversations about Webmaster Tools and web search issues.

Today, however, I’m thrilled to announce that our English and Polish Help Groups are getting a
makeover. And the changes are more than just skin-deep. Our new Help Forums should make it easier
for you to find answers, share resources with others, and have your participation acknowledged.

You can
read more about the changes
on the Official Google Blog, and then check it out for yourself:
English,
Polish.

What will happen to the old
English
and
Polish?
While our old groups are now closed to new posts, they will still be available in read-only
mode in case you want to reference any of your favorite posts from the good old days. Many of the
most frequently-asked questions (and answers!) have already been transferred to our new Help
Forums.

If I was a member of the old group, will I automatically be a member of the new forum? We
won’t be “transferring” membership from the old groups to the new, so even if you were a member of
our Google Groups forum, you’ll still need to join the new forum in order to participate.
Nicknames and user profiles are also managed separately, so you’re welcome to recreate your Google
Groups profile in our new forum, or reinvent yourself.

What about the Webmaster Help Groups in other languages? They’ll be moving to the new Help
Forum format in 2009. Specific dates will be announced in each of the groups as they get closer to
their moving date.

Written by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst