Introducing Google Wallet

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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

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Îñţérñåţîöñåļîžåţîöñ Posted: 09 Sep 2011 10:07 AM PDT Webmaster level: Intermediate So you’re going global, and you need your website to follow. Should be a simple case of getting the text translated and you’re good to go, right? Probably not. The Google Webmaster Team frequently builds sites that are localized into over 40 languages, so here are some things that we take into account when launching our pages in both other languages and regions. (Even if you think you might be immune to these issues because you only offer content in English, it could be that non-English language visitors are using tools like Google Translate to view your content in their language. This traffic should show up in your analytics dashboard, so you can get an idea of how many visitors are not viewing your site in the way it’s intended.) More languages != more HTML templates We can’t recommend this enough: reuse the same template for all language versions, and always try to keep the HTML of your template simple. Keeping the HTML code the same for all languages has its advantages when it comes to maintenance. Hacking around with the HTML code for each language to fix bugs doesn’t scale–keep your page code as clean as possible and deal with any styling issues in the CSS. To name just one benefit of clean code: most translation tools will parse out the translatable content strings from the HTML document and that job is made much easier when the HTML is well-structured and valid. How long is a piece of string? If your design relies on text playing nicely with fixed-size elements, then translating your text might wreak havoc. For example, your left-hand side navigation text is likely to translate into much longer strings of text in several languages–check out the difference in string lengths between some English and Dutch language navigation for the same content. Be prepared for navigation titles that might wrap onto more than one line by figuring out your line height to accommodate this (also worth considering when you create your navigation text in English in the first place). Variable word lengths cause particular issues in form labels and controls. If your form layout displays labels on the left and fields on the right, for example, longer text strings can flow over into two lines, whereas shorter text strings do not seem associated with their form input fields–both scenarios ruin the design and impede the readability of the form. Also consider the extra styling you’ll need for right-to-left (RTL) layouts (more on that later). For these reasons we design forms with labels above fields, for easy readability and styling that will translate well across languages. click to enlarge Also avoid fixed-height columns–if you’re attempting to neaten up your layout with box backgrounds that match in height, chances are when your text is translated, the text will overrun areas that were only tall enough to contain your English content. Think about whether the UI elements you’re planning to use in your design will work when there is more or less text–for instance, horizontal vs. vertical tabs. On the flip side Source editing for bidirectional HTML can be problematic because many editors have not been built to support the Unicode bidirectional algorithm (more research on the problems and solutions). In short, the way your markup is displayed might get garbled: <p>ابةتث <img src="foo.jpg" alt=" جحخد"< ذرزسش!</p> Our own day-to-day usage has shown the following editors to currently provide decent solutions for bidirectional editing: particularly Coda, and also Dreamweaver, IntelliJ IDEA and JEditX. When designing for RTL languages you can build most of the support you need into the core CSS and use the directional attribute of the html element (for backwards compatibility) in combination with a class on the body element. As always, keeping all styles in one core stylesheet makes for better maintainability. Some key styling issues to watch out for: any elements floated right will need to be floated left and vice versa; extra padding or margin widths applied to one side of an element will need to be overridden and switched, and any text-align attributes should be reversed. We generally use the following approach, including using a class on the body tag rather than a html[dir=rtl] CSS selector because this is compatible with older browsers: Elements: <body class="rtl"> <h1><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><img alt="Google" src="http://www.google.com/images/logos/google_logo.png" /></a> Heading</h1> Left-to-right (default) styling: h1 { height: 55px; line-height: 2.05; margin: 0 0 25px; overflow: hidden; } h1 img { float: left; margin: 0 43px 0 0; position: relative; } Right-to-left styling: body.rtl { direction: rtl; } body.rtl h1 img { float: right; margin: 0 0 0 43px; } (See this in action in English and Arabic.) One final note on this subject: most of the time your content destined for right-to-left language pages will be bidirectional rather than purely RTL, because some strings will probably need to retain their LTR direction–for example, company names in Latin script or telephone numbers. The way to make sure the browser handles this correctly in a primarily RTL document is to wrap the embedded text strings with an inline element using an attribute to set direction, like this: <h2>‫עוד ב- <span dir="ltr">Google</span>‬</h2> In cases where you don’t have an HTML container to hook the dir attribute into, such as title elements or JavaScript-generated source code for message prompts, you can use this equivalent to set direction where &#x202B; and &#x202C;‬ are Unicode control characters for right-to-left embedding: <title>&#x202B;‫הפוך את Google לדף הבית שלך‬&#x202B;</title> Example usage in JavaScript code: var ffError = '\u202B' +'כדי להגדיר את Google כדף הבית שלך ב\x2DFirefox, לחץ על הקישור \x22הפוך את Google לדף הבית שלי\x22, וגרור אותו אל סמל ה\x22בית\x22 בדפדפן שלך.'+ '\u202C'; (For more detail, see the W3C’s articles on creating HTML for Arabic, Hebrew and other right-to-left scripts and authoring right-to-left scripts.) It’s all Greek to me… If you’ve never worked with non-Latin character sets before (Cyrillic, Greek, and a myriad of Asian and Indic), you might find that both your editor and browser do not display content as intended. Check that your editor and browser encodings are set to UTF-8 (recommended) and consider adding a element and the lang attribute of the html element to your HTML template so browsers know what to expect when rendering your page–this has the added benefit of ensuring that all Unicode characters are displayed correctly, so using HTML entities such as &eacute; (é) will not be necessary, saving valuable bytes! Check the W3C’s tutorial on character encoding if you’re having trouble–it contains in-depth explanations of the issues. A word on naming Lastly, a practical tip on naming conventions when creating several language versions. Using a standard such as the ISO 639-1 language codes for naming helps when you start to deal with several language versions of the same document. Using a conventional standard will help users understand your site’s structure as well as making it more maintainable for all webmasters who might develop the site, and using the language codes for other site assets (logo images, PDF documents) is handy to be able to quickly identify files. See previous Webmaster Central posts for advice about URL structures and other issues surrounding working with multi-regional websites and working with multilingual websites. That’s a summary of the main challenges we wrestle with on a daily basis; but we can vouch for the fact that putting in the planning and work up front towards well-structured HTML and robust CSS pays dividends during localization! Posted by Kathryn Cullen, Google Webmaster Team

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Display creative checklist - Google Inside AdWords

Inside AdWords

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Display creative checklist: building direct response ads

Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:48 PM PDT

If you’re designing display ads and have direct response goals, your ads need to catch the user’s eye, convey key information, and encourage them to click and explore your website. To get you started, we’ve put together the top ten tips learned through the collective experience of hundreds of Google AdWords account teams. These ten tips will help drive effective direct response marketing campaigns.

1. Call-to-Action
A call-to-action phrase or button encourages users to click on your ad and clearly lets them know what is coming next. While direct call-to-actions such as “Buy Now!“ may be common, they can also be too insistent. Using indirect call-to-actions like “Explore Now“ or short phrases such as “Travel Your Dream“ help encourage action without demanding a strong commitment.

2. Call-to-Action in Every Frame

Include a call-to-action & key message in every frame of your ad – especially the final frame. This ensures that you get across these two very important points no matter when the user's attention is drawn to your ad. When your animation stops, your ad will continue to compel action from users.

3. Company or Brand logo
Keep your brand or product logo in front of users in all frames. This will highlight your brand and can heighten credibility and increase your click-through rate. If this isn’t possible, include your logo in the final frame of animated ads to ensure your brand shows after animation has ended.

4. Pricing and Promotion
The more information on pricing that a user can gain from your display ad, the better. Consider providing promotional pricing to the audiences your ad is reaching. Discount offers supported by discount codes can help attract attention. If users don’t like the price or terms of your offer, they won’t click on your ad. Pre-qualifying users can save you the cost of that click.

5. Clear Value Proposition
Include a clear, compelling message highlighting the benefit of your product or service. If your ad is animated,

consider presenting a value proposition in each frame. Users should feel as though they are missing out on something by not clicking.

6. Sense of Urgency
Create a sense of urgency in your ad. Referring to deadlines or limits in quantity and availability can persuade users to give your message consideration right away.

7. Coordinate Colors & Images
Customize the color scheme of your ad to match your image or logo, and use easy-to-view colors for backgrounds and fonts. Extremely bright colors can be unpleasant and difficult to read. Using transparent PNG-format images can greatly improve aesthetics within your ad.

8. Balance Text & Images
Take advantage of both text and images to convey your message. Text and images are processed by different parts of the brain. Integrating both into your ad – harmoniously – can help you influence viewers cognitively and emotionally. Complementary text and images may help viewers remember your ad long after they have seen it.

9. Relevant Landing Page
Direct users to the most relevant landing page where the product or service is described in detail. The message on the page should match the message or promotion in your ad. This can have a positive impact on your users, conversion rate, and quality score. Remember to match the look & feel of your ad to the landing page.

Display Ad

Landing Page

10. Cast a Wide Net

Create your ad in every standard size or format to ensure that it reaches all of the highest performing corners of the Google Display Network. Some sites only accommodate specific formats and ad sizes. A full suite of ad sizes will improve your ad’s chances of appearing on those sites.

You can find these ten tips on the Display Creative Checklist website here.

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

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PDFs in Google search results

Posted: 01 Sep 2011 09:59 AM PDT

Webmaster level: All

Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. During this ambitious quest, we sometimes encounter non-HTML files such as PDFs, spreadsheets, and presentations. Our algorithms don’t let different filetypes slow them down; we work hard to extract the relevant content and to index it appropriately for our search results. But how do we actually index these filetypes, and—since they often differ so much from standard HTML—what guidelines apply to these files? What if a webmaster doesn’t want us to index them?



Google first started indexing PDF files in 2001 and currently has hundreds of millions of PDF files indexed. We’ve collected the most often-asked questions about PDF indexing; here are the answers:

Q: Can Google index any type of PDF file?
A: Generally we can index textual content (written in any language) from PDF files that use various kinds of character encodings, provided they’re not password protected or encrypted. If the text is embedded as images, we may process the images with OCR algorithms to extract the text. The general rule of the thumb is that if you can copy and paste the text from a PDF document into a standard text document, we should be able to index that text.

Q: What happens with the images in PDF files?
A: Currently the images are not indexed. In order for us to index your images, you should create HTML pages for them. To increase the likelihood of us returning your images in our search results, please read the tips in our Help Center.

Q: How are links treated in PDF documents?
A: Generally links in PDF files are treated similarly to links in HTML: they can pass PageRank and other indexing signals, and we may follow them after we have crawled the PDF file. It’s currently not possible to "nofollow" links within a PDF document.

Q: How can I prevent my PDF files from appearing in search results; or if they already do, how can I remove them?
A: The simplest way to prevent PDF documents from appearing in search results is to add an X-Robots-Tag: noindex in the HTTP header used to serve the file. If they’re already indexed, they’ll drop out over time if you use the X-Robot-Tag with the noindex directive. For faster removals, you can use the URL removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools.

Q: Can PDF files rank highly in the search results?
A: Sure! They’ll generally rank similarly to other webpages. For example, at the time of this post, [mortgage market review], [irs form 2011] or [paracetamol expert report] all return PDF documents that manage to rank highly in our search results, thanks to their content and the way they’re embedded and linked from other webpages.

Q: Is it considered duplicate content if I have a copy of my pages in both HTML and PDF?
A: Whenever possible, we recommend serving a single copy of your content. If this isn’t possible, make sure you indicate your preferred version by, for example, including the preferred URL in your Sitemap or by specifying the canonical version in the HTML or in the HTTP headers of the PDF resource. For more tips, read our Help Center article about canonicalization.

Q: How can I influence the title shown in search results for my PDF document?
A: We use two main elements to determine the title shown: the title metadata within the file, and the anchor text of links pointing to the PDF file. To give our algorithms a strong signal about the proper title to use, we recommend updating both.

If you want to learn more, watch Matt Cutt’s video about PDF files’ optimization for search, and visit our Help Center for information about the content types we’re able to index. If you have feedback or suggestions, please let us know in the Webmaster Help Forum.


Posted by Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst

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Reorganizing internal vs.external backlinks

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

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Reorganizing internal vs. external backlinks

Posted: 31 Aug 2011 02:59 PM PDT

Webmaster level: All

Today we’re making a change to the way we categorize link data in Webmaster Tools. As you know, Webmaster Tools lists links pointing to your site in two separate categories: links coming from other sites, and links from within your site. Today’s update won’t change your total number of links, but will hopefully present your backlinks in a way that more closely aligns with your idea of which links are actually from your site vs. from other sites.

You can manage many different types of sites in Webmaster Tools: a plain domain name (example.com), a subdomain (www.example.com or cats.example.com), or a domain with a subfolder path (www.example.com/cats/ or www.example.com/users/catlover/). Previously, only links that started with your site’s exact URL would be categorized as internal links: so if you entered www.example.com/users/catlover/ as your site, links from www.example.com/users/catlover/profile.html would be categorized as internal, but links from www.example.com/users/ or www.example.com would be categorized as external links. This also meant that if you entered www.example.com as your site, links from example.com would be considered external because they don’t start with the same URL as your site (they don’t contain www).

Most people think of example.com and www.example.com as the same site these days, so we’re changing it such that now, if you add either example.com or www.example.com as a site, links from both the www and non-www versions of the domain will be categorized as internal links. We’ve also extended this idea to include other subdomains, since many people who own a domain also own its subdomains—so links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com.

Links for www.google.com	External links	Internal links
Previously categorized as...	www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/	www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/
Now categorized as...	www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html	scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/ www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/

If you own a site that’s on a subdomain (such as googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) or in a subfolder (www.google.com/support/webmasters/) and don’t own the root domain, you’ll still only see links from URLs starting with that subdomain or subfolder in your internal links, and all others will be categorized as external links. We’ve made a few backend changes so that these numbers should be even more accurate for you.

Note that, if you own a root domain like example.com or www.example.com, your number of external links may appear to go down with this change; this is because, as described above, some of the URLs we were previously classifying as external links will have moved into the internal links report. Your total number of links (internal + external) should not be affected by this change.

As always, drop us a comment or join our Webmaster Help Forum if you have questions!

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

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Sharing recent innovations at Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco

Inside AdWords

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Sharing recent innovations at Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco

Posted: 31 Aug 2011 10:11 AM PDT

Two weeks ago, we headed up to San Francisco to participate in the Search Engine Strategies conference.
Over two days, our AdWords and DoubleClick representatives were able to
share, listen, and learn with several hundred of you. For those unable
to attend, here's a summary of some of the recent innovations we
highlighted at the show, and a few photos from our booth on the expo
floor.

The AdWords team took the stage to share some of our latest Ad Innovations with the SES audience. During our presentation, we covered three areas of innovation designed to:

• Make AdWords easier to manage with automation features like Automated Rules and the Opportunties tab
• Make ads more relevant and useful with new ad formats such as Ad Sitelinks, Product Listing Ads, and mobile ad formats like Click to Call Phone Extensions
• Help you make smarter decisions with AdWords Campaign Experiments and just-launched Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics

The DoubleClick Search team showed attendees how the new DoubleClick Search V3
makes it faster and easier to manage large search campaigns across
Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing. Large
advertisers and agencies are already taking advantage of the improved workflow and reporting features in V3, while revamped bid optimization features have helped improve the return on investment from their campaigns.

We hope to see you at a future event. In the meantime, visit the Ad Innovations pages and the DoubleClick Search blog to stay on top of new features and share your feedback.

David, a Googler, takes questions from SES attendees

Devin, a Googler, demos the +1 button

The DoubleClick booth is set up to welcome visitors.

Kit follows up his talk about new features in V3

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

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