Twenty-Eight Minutes... More than a full TV show worth of content, in-jokes and Google tips from a conversation with Vanessa Fox from Google's Webmaster Central team came out of yesterday's antics. The video is here. Content includes:
- Google Base Listings
- Sitemaps for Google News
- New Sitemaps.org Iniatitives
- New Functionality for Webmaster Central
- Delete URL
- Live PR Score
- Alexa-like Functionality
- Link Sorting in Webmaster
- Supplemental Index
- Link Penalty Notifications
- Links to Dead/Error Pages
- Orphaned Pages in Sitemaps
- Search Results in the Google Search Results
- Moving Sites and Avoiding the Temporary Loss of Rankings (if you watch nothing else, go to 6:15 in the piece and watch for Vanessa's answers)
- Rebecca's Comics
- Vanessa vs. Kelly in Rock'em'Sock'em Robots at the Vintage Dinner
There's a lot of great stuff in here:
Thanks, Vanessa - I really appreciate your participation.
Note for the Mozzers:
I suffered no long term ill effects at the hands of Mr. Fishkin.
You mean he hired a large guy named Bruno?
No, much much worse...
He's called in the only people who can tell Rand off... Gillian and Mystery Guest!
I can't remember the last time I saw a 20+ minute interview where I didn't zone out in the middle... especially about SEO. Great job Rand and good questions from the people of Moz.
PS. I've never met her in person but she strikes me as a cutie...?
ditto
ditto
PS. Unfortunately, I can only give you one thumbs up, so you can choose which part of your response it should be applied. ;)
Wow, you seemed to get all the suggestions from your post asking for possible questions to ask during the interview. Thanks for including all our questions in with your own. It's neat to have them answered personally and be able to watch it as it happens.
Great Job once again Rand, in all honesty I haven't finished the video yet, the beginning about google base shot me into work mode. I recently began consulting for a real estate company, so I created an RSS feed and submitted it to Google base, but Im just a bit confused. Do I need to do this daily (the feed is updated nightly) and if not, why did it need to be in rss format? Anyone out there have some more experience with google base and how to use it to full potential?
i use google base for a client (products). you can include an expiration date in your feed (as well as many additional attributes), but (and i can't find it on there now) i think items will automatically expire after 30 days. i submit my feed about once a week, even if i don't change a thing (though i'll usually tweak the description or title a bit), i'll still submit it weekly.
not sure if that helped. i'm still trying to learn google base & how to optimize it myself.
Just in case anyone else cared:
Thanks for asking our questions, great interview!
Nice interview Rand. Thanks Vanessa for taking the time to talk to Rand.
fun interview - did his ankles recover?
Will Rand marry Vanessa as Yahoo suggested?
Is Vanessa going to reclaim her rockemsockem robots title?
Is MSN really 'harder' than Google?
We're all staying tuned!
Important questions all. We have answers to #2 already, however. Sorry, Yahoo. No. Try as you might to matchmake, Rand is already well spoken for and Vanessa is doing very nicely without a Fish appended to her name.
nice vid... very interesting stuff about google base
Rand, it was is a great interview. It made my home page yesterday. Your SES badge sure filled out the screen! ;)
Well done. - Marek
I haven't got sound on my computer so the video isn't much use to me but that live PR sounds quality, get it boxed Venessa!
cool interview, great to watch good work!!!
I finally had a chance to watch the video. Thanks Rand and Vanessa. As good as I remember from the last time. The paid lin discussion was well timed given what's being said today on many blogs.
The discussion on moving to a new domain was very interesting since I'm planning on doing that with my site in the not too distant future. Parts of the site will be new, but I've been wondering on the best way to post my blog. I had been thinking of moving it over a little bit at a time and after listening to Vanessa I'm thinking it might be the way to go.
Thanks again for another good interview.
A long enough video that it took me a few days to get round to watching it but that was well worth it. Well done to both of you for making a half-hour video that was worth watching all the way through.
Thanks for making the effort.
I wonder if that was the link that Vanessa wanted :-)
PS great video, Vanessa + Rand!
Yeah, Rand. Remember that sad face of yours? That's what my face looks like now since you can't even remember my domain name!
You mean you didn't just get some snazzy photos of you done for your site? ;)
Sorry about that, V... All fixed now.
"Avoiding the Temporary Loss of Rankings"?
What Vanessa said is that the 301s make the dip in rankings less abrupt. That'w why she recommends phasing out the 301 redirects, as you see how you recover the rankings back for each page of the site.
Good interview towards the end.
A great deal of thanks to you both (and cameraman) for an impressive interview.
identity you talking about my link? It is a breakdown of the whole interview that was posted today on WPW. How is that not relevant. Go ahead and condom it up, just trying to help.
Whooo, easy there incrediblehelp...
No, the link in Rand's intro to Vanessa Fox... I don't think that is her site.
https://www.vanessafoxnude.com is her site Identity, I'm sure they'll correct it soon but there it is in case someone didn't know. (though somehow that result seems to fit the url) ;)
Um, Rand, are you sure that link for Vanessa Fox is correct????
Some how, I'm thinking maybe not so much. Might want to toss a link condom on there.
Thanks, Rand (and Vanessa). Great information on sitemaps, supplemental results, and search-result indexing, all of which are highly relevant to my clients right now. I do appreciate what Vanessa said about supplementals, although I admit it's hard not to feel penalized when you have a site with 99.98% of its content stuck in purgatory.
Great info and interview.
Amazing at how much information was covered... you weren't kidding, that was a filled to the rim and overflowing worth of 28 minutes.
Thanks Vanessa, thanks Rand!
Rand—thanks for actually asking the questions that we submitted!
I thought you were just polishing our apples with a phony request for suggestions.
It was awesome of you to respond to our requests like that.
Fun interview, packed with information yet light.
Good interview, Rand :)
Thank you for the puppy dog eyes for the 301 improvements - may I never have to move a site again!
If history is anything to go by, they will listen and implement :) We can hope!
(Recently moved a site - good 301s, no change in site structure. 6 weeks later only back to 75% of traffic, and I suspect I am doing well. I'm mostly regretting not remembering a lesson I had already learned, of staging the move :( )
Thanks Rand and Vanessa. Great vid, great feedback.
there's one thing that kind of had me stumped, which is the "dub-dub-dub-non-dub-dub-thing" - what is that?
Re "dub-dub-dub-non-dub-dub-thing" - if you sign up with Google's Webmaster Tools and get your domain ownership verified, you can set a preferred domain version, either the www or non-www version. Google will then fairly quickly make sure that all of the non-preferred versions are corrected. It's for those who don't 301 from the start :D but it doesn't replace 301 redirecting in the long run.
thanks softplus, i know about the preferred domain setting in WMT but was not aware that it was called the "dub-dub-dub-non-dub-dub-thing"
:)
dub-dub-dub like "W"s. Still, it's better to just redirect your htaccess so it works everywhere.
Thanks Rand, SEOMOZ, Vanessa and Google. this looks just Great. Absolutely awesome in fact. I'm looking forward to watching it all this evening at home.
great interview, Now i just need more MORE MOOOORREEE
Thank you for asking the question Rand about moving domains. I had emailed you the other day asking about that for a client of ours, as well as Rebecca. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but I did want to ask your opinion as far as a clarification. Say I have x.com/a/a.html and I spin it off. If I change the URL structure what Vanessa was saying is find the closest 1:1 match from a.html to whatever I spin it off to on the new domain and pray that everything works out. Not that I would have to make the exact same page, "a.html" in this case on the new domain with the exact same content correct?
I think a part of what she's saying is not that it needs to be the same URL structure - but if it isn't (and especially if you change the content) you won't be able to compare the old and the new site directly.
I think there are going to be varying degrees of idealness.
In the ideal world, I imagine if the only variance is domain A versus domain B, you will have the smoothest transition.
The more variables you play with, changes to site architecture, file names, and content, the more risk you inject into the process.
It will really come down to risk versus reward and what you can and can't do.
LOL no hard feelings identity, I know how some get when posting links in the comment area of blogs. Can be a touchy subject!!
I posted my feedback and comments on the interview here:
https://www.jaankanellis.com/highlights-from-the-wpn-video-where-rand-fishkin-seomozorg-interviews-vanessa-fox-google/
Check it out.