Simplified Chinese blog: Message Center: It’s all about your site

2008-09-01

You may have tried our
Webmaster Tools
for better interaction with Google and better management of your own site, but have you ever
noticed the “Message center” at the upper right corner of the dashboard? Since its launch in July
2007, Message center has become a more and more important channel for Google to communicate with
webmasters regarding your Webmaster Tools account and the sites you manage. To help you have a
better idea of what the Message center is, here I’d like to introduce more about it.

What kind of messages could webmasters get from Message center? Currently you may receive the
following kinds of message from Google, which may remind you in time and help you solve some
problems regarding the sites you own. Over time we’ll use the Message center as a communication
channel for more types of information.

• Webmasters may receive a notification in Message center if your site is in violation with
  webmaster guidelines. It
  could be
  hidden text or hidden links issue,
  or some part of your sites being hacked, or other issues that are against Google’s webmaster
  guidelines. In this case, we may send a message detailing some issues which you need to fix to
  bring your site into compliance with our webmaster guidelines. Here below is a sample message
  we send to webmasters who have hidden text issue on their website:
  
• “Infinite space” is a frequent
  problem that Googlebot faces when it crawls the web. Lots of dynamically generated links with
  little or no unique content consume the bandwidth and may prevent Googlebot from completely
  indexing the real content on your site. Google recently started notifying site owners if you
  have some “infinite space” problem or other problems related to crawling. Register with
  Webmaster Tools and check Message center, you’ll know if Google has notified you of this or any
  other problems while crawling your sites. What’s more, you could also find sample URLs for the
  potential problem attached in the message, which might be helpful for your troubleshooting. For
  more information, you could also refer to the
  documentation about infinite spaces
  in the
  Webmaster Help Center.
• From our previous post about
  requesting reconsideration using Google Webmaster Tools,
  you may have an idea when and how to file a reconsideration request to Google. Once you’ve
  submitted a request, you’ll find a message from Google in the Message center confirming that
  we’ve received it. We’ll then review your site for compliance with the webmaster guidelines.
  Before filing a reconsideration request, don’t forget to double check whether your site is
  inline with webmaster guidelines or not.

What should I do if I didn’t get registered with Google Webmaster Tools before and possibly miss
any message that Google sent to me? Don’t worry. Since March 2008, Message center began to support
“message waiting” feature
for future owners who haven’t previously registered with Google Webmaster Tools. Messages sent
after the launch of this feature can now be retrieved for one year and will remain in your
account. As soon as you verify your ownership of the site, you’ll be able to access the messages
(if there is any) even if they were sent before you get registered.

Creating a Webmaster Tools account and verifying your site gives you access to any message from
Google and better communication with Google. So why not
claim your site in Webmaster Tools
right now so that we might give you a heads-up of some issues that we see? Should you have any
questions, a great place to look for help is our
Webmaster Help Group.
Meanwhile, your feedback and suggestions for Message center would be very much appreciated.

By Fa Wang, Search Quality Team