More details about our webmaster guidelines

Friday, June 08, 2007

At SMX Advanced
on Monday, Matt Cutts talked about
our webmaster guidelines.
Later, during Q&A, someone asked about adding more detail to the guidelines: more explanation
about violations and more actionable help on how to improve sites. You ask—we deliver!
On Tuesday, Matt
told the SMX crowd that we’d updated the guidelines overnight to include exactly those things!
We work fast around here. (OK, maybe we had been working on some of it already.)

So, what’s new? Well, the
guidelines themselves
haven’t changed. But the
specific quality guidelines
now link to expanded information to help you better understand how to spot and fix any issues.
That section is below so you can click through to explore these new details.

Quality guidelines – specific guidelines

• Avoid
  hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use
  cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send
  automated queries to Google.
• Don’t
  load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially
  duplicate content.
• Don’t
  create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid
  “doorway” pages created just for search engines,
  or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with
  little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value.
  Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

As Riona MacNarmara recently
posted in our discussion forum,
we are working to expand our
webmaster help content
even further and want your input. If you have suggestions, please post them in the forum. We would
love to hear from you!

Posted by Vanessa Fox