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Monday, June 18, 2007
A while ago, I
posted in the Webmaster user group,
looking for feedback on our
Help Center
and how we can improve the assistance we provide to our webmasters. And wow, did we get a lot of
feedback - both in the group and in the blogosphere. I'm amazed at the webmaster community and
your willingness to share your thoughts with us: thank you!
Here's a selection of what we're hearing:
You want Help to be more discoverable
It's not as easy as it should be to find the information you're looking for. You'd like Google
to do a better job of surfacing the answers to the most common questions. The browse structure
doesn't make it easy for users to find help, and sometimes search depends on users knowing
exactly the right term to search for.
You like the idea of context-sensitive help - on-the-spot assistance (often shown in a tooltip
that appears when you hover over an item) that doesn't require you to click to a different
Help page.
Right now, it's not clear when new Help information - or new features - are added, and you'd
like Google to look at calling these out.
You want Help to be more useful
You'd like Google to look at adding videos and graphics
You'd like us to providing the kind of information that's relevant to the average webmaster,
who may not have a deep knowledge of SEO techniques. You're looking for good and understandable
answers to common questions.
You'd like us to expand the actual content, and do a much better job in explaining potential
reasons why sites may have dropped the rankings.
What's next?
Well, over the next several weeks, we'll be working on lots of changes to the Help Center, both in
its content and its organization. We'll be looking at all the feedback we've gotten, and we're
taking it very seriously: believe me, I have a long task list for this area. But it can always
grow: if you have some great thoughts or ideas,
jump into the discussion.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["Google acknowledges that the Webmaster Help Center needs improvement in discoverability and usefulness based on user feedback."],["Users desire easier navigation, context-sensitive help, and clearer communication of new information and features within the Help Center."],["Google plans to enhance the Help Center by incorporating videos, graphics, and content relevant to all webmasters, including explanations for ranking drops."],["Google is actively working on these changes and encourages further feedback from the webmaster community."]]],["Feedback from webmasters revealed desires for a more discoverable and useful Help Center. Users requested easier access to information, context-sensitive help, and notifications for new content. They also suggested adding videos and graphics, providing information for average webmasters, and explaining reasons for ranking drops. The Webmaster Tools Team will implement changes to the Help Center based on this feedback and invites further discussion.\n"]]
