My header image shows a Google street sign. It’s real, but we don’t have a Google Street–it designates the driveway at Huff and Charleston as Google HQ to help people navigate, I suppose.
It’s not reflected in this StreetView image, but it’s roughly at the corner:
Update: Since I wrote this post, the lamppost has appeared, but without the signage. 
I ran across this today (emphasis mine):
I don’t know if the author of this sponsored post was in a rush here, but I thought I’d point that out. After all, brianwhite.org is a Website That Cares!
Added: Since it’s been a while since I blogged about Webspam (I work on the Google Webspam team), I’ll add a reference to our quality guidelines on link schemes.
I stumbled upon the Mitt Romney political video from the direction of a parody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoU41UwL5LI
Hmm, a new word, sounds like “caliphet.” Unfortunately, the Google search [define:caliphet] didn’t help me out. [caliphet] wasn’t much help either.
I tried ["jihadist *" +romney] and bingo, the apparent proper spelling, caliphate, showed itself. While I would have liked “do you mean Caliphate?” to have shown up, I know I have the means to get to an answer in a reasonable fashion with a Google search. Of course I’m biased, but it’s of great comfort to know tricks that work.
Andy Beal takes issue with an article that puts SEO in a not-so-positive light. I’m neutral on the first part of the article, but the business owner interviewed goes on to say
…business owners need to be aware of what their internet staff are doing, because programmers are constantly learning new methods, new techniques and tips from each other and from the web. “They would not give a second thought to using this new but perhaps untested and dubious technique on your live website just to hone freshly acquired skills or to appear to be a bit more professional in their own minds.”
That’s an important point and I agree in spirit. I don’t agree that everyone is adding features and the latest tricks just as a resume-building activity, but I have heard in person, from feedback to Google, and in forums that site owners have employed someone who has taken unnecessary risks with their sites, only to find out after a removal from search engine results.
Overall, I think that the number of people working on websites who are willing to make risky changes is a small fraction. And, at the end of the day, one has to put a large amount of trust in those working for him or her. However, business owners can consider a few things with respect to their website to mitigate these risks.
Knowing the spirit of the quality guidelines of search engines, learning what techniques they frown upon, doing a thing or two to keep tabs on their site, and knowing where to get help, are all potentially worthwhile. It then becomes straightforward to touch base with staff on changes, or bring that knowledge to new proposals, to ask how well the work meshes with search engine guidelines. If the web designers, programmers, or SEOs they work with know that the site owner has a basic savviness, those doing the work might be less likely to employ risky techniques on a whim.
Adam and a host of other good folks have added some FAQs to our Google Webmaster Help Group.
These include a charter and tips on posting, as well as answers to common questions for Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking, and using Webmaster Tools. These FAQs cover a lot of topics that are brought up in postings on a repeat basis, so they’ll sure to be well referenced.
I have it on good authority that these FAQs are being translated for our different language versions of Google Webmaster Help.
Kudos all around to the team and to the active group participants who lend their experience and skill in helping others.
Inside Google, we email queries around a lot. An example might be
Hey Brian, check out “mexican food in Dublin”
Now, does the person who sent that to me want me to search in quotes, or without? When we email queries around, we use brackets ([]) to represent the search box:
[mexican food in dublin]
If I want the quotes,
["mexican food in Dublin"]
Saves an email back, “did you want me to put that in quotes or not?”
While we’re on the topic, this will probably help me:
["* mexican food in dublin" +ireland]
Looks like I’ll be taking the DART out to Howth…
