Support for Polish

7/14/2006 03:13:00 PM

Posted by Vanessa Fox

Google Sitemaps has added support for Polish. If you already use Google in Polish, you should see the Sitemaps user interface in Polish automatically. Otherwise, you can click the Preferences link from the Google home page and choose Polish from the interface list.

The webmaster help center is also now available in Polish. This includes all the content in the help center, including our webmaster guidelines. Simply choose "Polish" from the Change Language menu. We also have a Polish Google Group for discussing Sitemaps and other webmaster issues.

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More control over titles too

7/14/2006 10:37:00 AM

Posted by Vanessa Fox

Yesterday we told you that you can use a meta tag to ask us not to use descriptions of your site from the Open Directory Project (ODP) when we generate snippets. Some of you have asked if this meta tag prevents us from using the title from the ODP as well. Yes, this meta tag does apply to both the title and description from the ODP.

Also, as noted in our webmaster help center, you can combine parameters in the meta tag. So, for instance, you could use the following meta tag:

<meta="robots" content="noodp, noarchive">

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More control over page snippets

7/13/2006 10:56:00 AM

Posted by Vanessa Fox

The way we generate the descriptions (snippets) that appear under a page in the search results is completely automated. The process uses both the content on a page as well as references to it that appear on other sites.

One source we use to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project, or ODP. Some site owners want to be to able to request not using the ODP for generating snippets, and we're happy to let you all know we've added support for this. All you have to do is add a meta tag to your pages.

To direct all search engines that support the meta tag not to use ODP information for the page's description, use the following:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">

Note that not all search engines may support this meta tag, so check with each for more information.

To direct Google specifically from using this information to describe a page, use the following:

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOODP">

For more information, visit the webmaster help center.

Once you add this meta tag to your pages, it may take some time for changes to your snippets to appear. Once we've recrawled your pages and refreshed our index, you should see updated snippets.

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Tips for Non-U.S. Sites

7/07/2006 03:38:00 PM

Posted by Vanessa Fox

If you're planning to be at Search Engine Strategies Miami next Monday and Tuesday, stop by and say hi at the Google booth. I'll be there answering any questions you may have about Sitemaps. This event is all about the Latin American market, so here's some information you might find helpful if your site is in Latin America or elsewhere.

If you want your site to show up for country-restricted searches, make sure it uses a country-specific domain (such as www.example.com.br). If you use a domain that isn't country specific (such as .com), make sure that the IP address of the site is located in that country.

If you want to know what visitors from different countries are searching for, take a look at the query stats in Sitemaps. This lets you see the difference in searches for each location, as well as what languages visitors use to type in their queries.

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