Googlified

Google has been indexing videos from other video hosting sites for quite a while now, but most videos are from larger video sites like Metacafe, Crackle, and sometimes mixed with Break and AOL Uncut, neglecting smaller video hosting services and independent video publishers that refuse to use those services (because of the low quality video encoding).

It’s now possible to have your videos on Google Video Search with the new Google Video Sitemaps that the Google Webmaster Tools just introduced. All you need to do is create a video sitemap and submit it to Google (it would be pretty easy if you have them organized, especially in a database). Google crawls a variety formats of videos, from MPEG to WMV to RM to FLV. There are some restrictions on the sitemaps and videos though, you can find them here.

Some competitions there for Blinkx and Truveo.

Google’s Webmaster Tools now has an option to let you “associate a geographic location” with your site. I initially thought that Google wants to know where you live at, but hmm, it’s actually used to let you choose the location is your site targeted to.

For example, an online shopping site that only ships products within a specific country, say, the U.S., so that the site might try to set the geographic target as the United States.

If you want to do that, you can go to Webmaster Tools, go to the site’s profile, and go down to “Set geographic target” under “Tools”. Click on the radio button labeled “Associate a geographic location with this site”, and enter “relevant information”.

Street address? That’s a bit too much in my opinion. “Hey Google, this site targets only that elderly lady across the street. Don’t show it to nobody else.” :)

[via Zorgloob]

Google Webmaster Tools updated last night with a new design and a new feature that allows webmasters to see the “number of users who have subscribed to these feeds using Google products such as iGoogle, Google Reader, or Orkut.”

The number should be the same as the one that the Google FeedFetcher returns.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

Google Webmaster Tools today introduce Message Center, a page where webmasters can find personalized information* from Google’s webmaster console regarding to sites the sites you claimed.

Initially the messages will refer to search quality issues, but over time we’ll use the Message Center as a communication channel for more types of information.

In other word, you probably don’t want to see a lot of messages in that message box.

*definitely not from your friendly SEO-neighbor Matt Cutts, but probably his robot toys.

Another new blog from Google, Google China Webmaster Blog. This time it’s a bit different though. Not only that it has its own domain, it’s running on WordPress!

The goal of the blog is to “provide a communication channel, collect information and improve Google Chinese search”. We will constantly provide updates about Google, delivering our thoughts on Chinese SEO, and answer questions interested by most of you.

Not eating your own dogfood anymore, Google? Or are you trying to imply something big coming? :)

The Inside AdSense Blog announced today that they have updated several sections of the AdSense program policy.

• AdSense publishers is now required to comply with the Page Quality Guidelines.
• Users can now place up to three link units on one page.

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land reports that Google’s Google Webmaster guidelines has also been updated. Here are some of the quality principles from the guideline.

• Make pages for users, not for search engines.
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.
• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.

There’s a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools that allows you to remove your sites’ contents from Google’s index. You can choose to remove individual pages, a whole directory, the entire site, or just the cached copy of the results, which is awesome.

While you can take some control with the new feature, you don’t have all the privilege - Google decides whether whether your request is eligible for removal. You can also request content that you don’t own from Google’s index using this form.

To learn more on how to use the new feature, read this post on Google Webmaster Central.

also read: More insight into anchor text