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Search Engine Guidelines and Blogs, Tips and Information for Webmasters, Search Engine Bloggers

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Search Engine Guidelines for SEO and Webmasters


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Before you start with your SEO campaigns make sure that you checked the current guidelines put in place by the major search engines to make sure that your SEO efforts will be successful in the long term and not have the opposite effect than you intended.

A "ban" or removal of your whole website from search engine index(es) is not worth the possible but short lived profits made by engaging into methods that are in clear violation with search engine guidelines.

The guidelines are not a law in any sense and breaking them is not illegal, however the consequences of violating them could be just as dramatic for your business.

Google Guidelines on SEO and Google Webmaster Guidelines
Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
MSN Search Guidelines for Successful Indexing
Ask.com Editorial Guidelines

Note: You can use this Google Spam Report Form (anonymously) or the form within the Google Webmaster Central interface (not anonymously) to report a site that seems to be abusing Google's quality guidelines.


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Official Search Engine Blogs


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Search Engine Webmaster Portals, Help and Support


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  • Googles Webmaster Central - the Webmasters one-stop shop for comprehensive information, tools and resources about how Google crawls and indexes websites. It provides additionally useful information such as keywords found on your site by Google, keywords used by people who link to you, internal and external in-bound links to your site and individual pages. You can specify your primary domain to avoid the canonical URL issue, configure site links (if Google shows them for your site), access the reinclusion request form and much more.

  • Google Removal Tool - Request the removal of pages or whole sites from the Google Index. Requests will usually be processed within 5 days. Either use the robot.txt, meta tags or tell google about specific pages that do not exist anymore.
  • Google Webmaster Tools - Query and Link Stats File Converter (here at Cumbrowski.com). In addition to the web based multi function tool is also a windows desktop based tool available for download, but only for handling the Google Query Stats download data. It does not allow conversion of any other feeds from Webmaster Central.
  • My Guide to Google Webmaster Central Tools and Downloads shows all the features and tools that are provided by Google and links to all the downloads that are available via their interface as well.

Google support email address for inqueries and support: help@google.com

Not sure if your site was banned? What is the "Google Sandbox Effect"?
To find out the answers to those questions and learn what to do, check my resource Search Engine Ban, Google Sandbox Effect, Poor SEO and Reinclusion Request, here at Cumbrowski.com.

  • Yahoo! Site Explorer - Track, Probe, Manage your site & feeds (site maps) in Yahoo! In addition to that are you able to use Yahoo! Site Explorer to exclude urls from the Yahoo! search index, determine back links to your website and much more.

  • Yahoo! Search Help Site with Information about everything related to Yahoo! Search.
  • Yahoo! Search Resources for Webmasters, including Search Support contact form and spam report form.
  • Live Search Webmaster Center (Beta) provides tools to webmasters to troubleshoot the crawling and indexing of your website, submit sitemaps and view statistics about your websites.

  • Site Owner Help for Microsoft Live Search provides a number of answers to common questions by webmasters regarding Microsoft Live Search and MSN Search.


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WordTracker Keyword Tool - Free Trial

"Inoffical" Search Engine Bloggers


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Famous Employees of Major Search Engines that are also Bloggers and thus part of a larger, public community.

Please note, that those blogs are of personal nature and anything stated by the employees in their posts is their personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the search engine they are working for.

Also be careful with your comments at those sites, if you do something that is considered "gray hat". They can cause as much trouble for you as they can help you. They are usually trying to provide as much information and answers to questions as the can do or are allowed to based on the restrictions of their NDA, which every employee has to sign, just like at every other company.

Matt Cutts SEO Blog - Gadgets, Google, and SEO. Matt in a Google.com employee working at the Googleplex in Mountainview, California, where he is the head of the Google web spam fighting team. He writes about personal stuff and also Google related things at his blog, what makes his blog a "must read" for every serious search engine marketer.
Niall Kennedy's Blog - Niall works for Microsoft Search (MSN Search / MS Live Search) and blogs about various topics, which are not always search related. He also publishes an audio podcast irregulary.

Former Famous Search Engine Blogggers


The year 2008 saw a lot of changes, two of the famous search engine bloggers who worked for the search engines Yahoo! and Ask.com are not with their companies anymore. One left by himself and the other one was let go by his former employer during a major lay-off and cut-down of the search engine's staff. Both bloggers continued to blog regardless of the fact that they are not working for a search engine anymore. They still have insights that others do not have and remain an interesting read for most webmasters.

Jeremy Zawodny's blog - Jeremy was until Spring 2008 a member of Yahoo!'s technical development group and writes about anything that interests him. He writes occasional about things related to Yahoo! or other search engines. He expresses his personal opinion at his blog, which is not always the same as Yahoo!s official one.
Gary Price's Blog called ResourceShelf.com, where Gary is the main editor. During the day is Gary the MLIS Director of Online Information Resources for Ask.com Search. His blogging partner is Shirl Kennedy and they blog about various internet related subjects, including search engine marketing and general industry news. update: As of March, 2008 does Gary not work for Ask.com anymore. He was among those 10% of Ask.com employees who were laid off during that same month.

GoLexa SEO Search Tool

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