Google Stared Even Better Indexing of SWF Content

We often get questions from webmasters about how we index content designed for Flash Player, so we wanted to take a moment to update you on some of our latest progress.

About two years ago we announced that through a collaboration with Adobe we had significantly improved Google’s capability to index Flash technology based content. Last year we followed up with an announcement that we had added external resource loading to our SWF indexing capabilities. This work has allowed us to index all kinds of textual content in SWF files, from Flash buttons and menus to self-contained Flash technology based websites. Currently almost any text a user can see as they interact with a SWF file on your site can be indexed by Googlebot and used to generate a snippet or match query terms in Google searches. Additionally, Googlebot can also discover URLs in SWF files and follow those links, so if your SWF content contains links to pages inside your website, Google may be able to crawl and index those pages as well.

Google Introduced Instant Previews

Google introduced Instant Previews, a new search feature that helps people find information faster by showing a visual preview of each result. Traditionally, elements of the search results like the title, URL, and snippet—the text description in each result—help people determine which results are best for them. Instant Previews achieves the same goal with a visual representation of each page and where the relevant content is, instead of a text description. For our webmaster community, this presents an opportunity to reveal the design of your site and why your page is relevant for a particular query. We'd like to offer some thoughts on how to take advantage of the feature.


First of all, it's important to understand what the new feature does. When someone clicks on the magnifying glass on any result, a zoomed-out snapshot of the underlying page appears to the right of the results. Orange highlights indicate where highly relevant content on the page is, and text call outs show search terms in context.

Here’s the Instant Preview for the Google Webmaster Forum.
These elements let people know what to expect if they click on that result, and why it's relevant for their query. Our testing shows that the feature really does help with picking the right result—using Instant Previews makes searchers 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click.

Google SEO Starter Guide Updated

Update on October 3, 2010: We have fixed the issue causing the highlighted text to be obscured on Linux PDF readers.

About two years ago we published our first SEO Starter Guide, which we have since translated into 40 languages. Today, we’re very happy to share with you the new version of the guide with more content and examples.

Here’s what’s new:

• Glossary to define terms throughout the guide
• More example images to help you understand the content
• Ways to optimize your site for mobile devices
• Clearer wording for better readability

You may remember getting to see what Googlebot looks like in our “First date with Googlebot” post. In this version of the SEO Starter Guide, Googlebot is back to provide you with some more SEO tips.

You can download the new version here [PDF].

Social Media Marketing - The Myths

The original Internet changed the way we work and live, and the way we interact with one another. The coming of Web 2.0 promises to be just as revolutionary, and just as important to businesspeople around the world.

When the original Internet came along, businesses like eBay and Amazon.com were quick to see the power of the online world, and those early adopters went on to become some of the most successful net residents. The same is sure to happen with the world of social media, and companies are already lining up to take advantage of this unique marketplace.

Unfortunately, myths and misinformation about the social media landscape and its business potential abound. Falling for one of these common myths could hurt your business, even as you are tying to build an online presence in the Web 2.0 world.

Let's take a look at ten of the most common social media myths in the business world:

1. Social media is easy - your 10 year old cousin can start a website, but that does not mean building a social media presence is easy. Take the time to think out your social media strategy before you get started - your business is riding on it.

2. Social media is free - it is true that there is no charge to join most social media networks, but there are costs involved in establishing your business presence on those sites. How you look is important, so look for people who can help you establish a great presence from day one.

3. Social media provides instant results - we have all heard the stories of the overnight YouTube sensations, or the new blog or website that makes a big splash. But those stories are the exception, not the rule. It takes time for social media to start working, and it pays to be patient.

Webmaster Tools - Links to Your Site Updated

The "Links to your site" feature in Webmaster Tools is now updated to show you which domains link the most to your site, in addition to other improvements. On the overview page you'll notice that there are three main sections: the domains linking most to your site, the pages on your site with the most links, and a sampling of the anchor text external sites are using when they link to your site.


Who links the most
Clicking the “More >>” link under the “Who links the most” section will take you to a new view that shows a listing of all the domains that link to your site. Each domain in the list can be expanded to display a sample of pages from your site which are linked to by that domain.


The "More >>" link under each specific domain lists all the pages linked to by that domain. At the top of the page there is a