Google Wants Your Help To Improve Search and Tools 2015

[engine]

According to a Google request, it's asking for your feedback [goo.gl] on how it can improve and change GWT and Search for 2015.

It might be helpful to have those suggestions here, too, so that we can keep track.

Please, if you are going to criticise Google, make it constructive.

[plus.google.com...]

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 6:53 pm (utc) on Jan 15, 2015]

Fixed first link

[Clay_More]

Perhaps the single most significant thing Google could do is put a "face" to their interaction with webmasters. Matt Cutts did a pretty good job in that role in the earlier years.

Honestly, when I see a "Google request", I can't print my response. It would undoubtedly include the words "shove" and "up". If they seek real interaction with people other than sycophants, then they have to at least pretend to make an effort.

I'll take traffic from Google, but I won't give them anything I don't have to.

[lammert]

That first link to Google Moderator doesn't work due to the WebmasterWorld redirector not capable of processing the '#' sign. You can access it here [goo.gl]

[engine]

Thanks lammert, I tweaked the link.

As I said, let's keep this thread on topic.

I'll pitch in with something that google needs to fix on searching.

If I search for a service from a country other than United States, for example, .co.uk, why do I still see SERPs which include U.S. businesses that do not have a presence or provide a service in that country? Geotargeting needs to be improved.

Improve the default for date search. If i'm searching a specific site, or even a range of sites for an answer, the serps show the responses in, I assume, what Google's algo believes is the best answer. Why can i not sort that search into date order as often, the most recent entry is the answer i want, but it may be some way down the serps. Sometimes, i even have to use the site search provided by the site itself.

[philgames]

I have posted my suggestion about a tool to combat content scrapers... especially content stitchers coming from those hacker/spammers. They are doing it at such a scale and spam so much that it is more than likely that googlebot will see there spam first before your site.

Inspired after every sentences on my site got reposted on thousands and thousands of hacked pages selling and redirecting to counterfeit sites.

:)

Hope you guys find my suggestion and vote.

[RedBar]

Geotargeting needs to be improved.

This is a huge problem, it used to be pretty good but the last couple of years they've completely dropped the ball e.g. When I search on Google.co.in for an Indian raw product I do not want to see results from the USA with finished products, that is worse than useless and generates loads of extra "false" page impressions, no wonder they kept claiming searches were up.

Google used to have fairly accurate image results, since their image grab of a couple of years ago they seem to have lost all sense of what is what. Totally inaccurate and non-relevant images are the order of the day for my trade widgets now.

[rish3]

One thing they could do that could eliminate (or perhaps confirm) a lot of grousing...

In your quarterly reports, start publishing the same statistics for organic clicks that you do for paid clicks.

[Savanadry]

From a users perspective can we go back to searching for strings of words rather than what google interprets those strings of words to be. Even if those pages are 10 years old.

A lot of knowledge re coding & archived medical research has been lost from google over the years. The knowledge is still valid and useful to the searcher even if the website owner didn't have a phd in SEO.

Drives me crazy as a regular searcher on both those topics.

[elguiri]

It would undoubtedly include the words "shove" and "up". If they seek real interaction with people other than sycophants, then they have to at least pretend to make an effort.

Clay More +1

[EditorialGuy]

I'd like to see the WMT links report indicate whether links are normal or nofollow.

[moTi]

my top three for google search:

presently curated content websites are under-represented because of google's overcautious algorithms. show more recent results for topical and time sensitive keywords - instead of having to select the timeframe in the search options (which is broken anyway). not all content is evergreen: save the user time and display more modern results instead of year-old outdated stuff from abandoned websites.

the suggestions under the input field are sometimes grammatically incorrect. i suspect that this happens because users are too lazy and - once searched for - click on them instead of typing the correct keywords, thereby pushing them further up in the top suggestions. this automatically reinforced stupidness is annoying.

better anticipation of user search intent: once more listening to the user, less algorithmic guessing around. don't waste my time with irrelevant results. i want to see them a) closer related to the keywords and b) more in the word order i have entered. not being forced to use quotes for exact match each time. don't treat me like a fool. there is a reason why i have entered the keywords in that way.

[IanCP]

save the user time and display more modern results instead of year-old outdated stuff from abandoned websites

If they were abandoned web sites, then they wouldn't exist would they? Nobody pays hosting costs on an abandoned web site.

Just because a web site is not updated doesn't mean it doesn't contain valuable content. I haven't updated my sites since 2001. Scientific principles expounded in my genre - even before I was born - simply do not change.

The unique lessons I provide cannot be improved upon.

Having said that?

Yes there are obvious examples where the latest information is most important. That is why I use two of Google's valuable features.

Search Tools: Any country - Any time

When I'm researching the latest developments for a new custom build desktop PC, I can elect to only see relevant results/options/features/data from over the more relevant last twelve months, or even less.

In the same context, if I'm checking the current pricing of those PC components as a guide, I can also elect to see the results from Australian sites only.

[EditorialGuy]

I'd also like to see:

- Seperate tabs for "desktop" and "mobile" in the "Search Queries" section.

Also, a beef:

- Google shouldn't reporting "mobile usability" errors for desktop pages that have properly-linked mobile counterparts. (I know desktop-page.htm isn't mobile-friendly; that's why I also created a mobile-page.htm version and linked the two with rel="alternate" and rel="canonical" statements.)

[RedBar]

Nobody pays hosting costs on an abandoned web site.

If it's hosted for free it can be abandoned and clutter the SERPs, yep, there are still many hosts offering free hosting...I did have to check that:-)

Funnily enough I was tring to contact a company the other day about something I bought in 2006, the last time their site was updated was 2007, and even more than a week later I've been unable to get hold of anyone. I must now assume that they're out of business and we'll have to make alternative arrangements.

So possibly a suggestion Google, a nominal yearly validation fee to simply prove that the site is still maintained and in business/available? A Dollar should be enough to cover all their expenses!

</duck>

[micklearn]

I'll take traffic from Google, but I won't give them anything I don't have to.

Exactly, the damage is done. The lack of suggestions to help them on WebmasterWorld speaks volumes. In the past, this thread probably would have been pages long by now.

[superclown2]

Google, please show me what I'm looking for. If I search for red widgets I want sites that are about red widgets and not mega sites with pages about green ones, blue ones and pink ones. OK maybe these mega sites do in fact have data somewhere about red widgets but I don't have time to search them, I want the correct results now.

[IanCP]

I want sites that are about red widgets and not mega sites with pages about green ones, blue ones and pink ones

Yes a quite familiar problem I often encounter no matter how creative I get by altering my search terms.

[Nutterum]

A better or at least easy to read graph showing impressions to clicks. At this time I assume pretty much everyone see a red flatline for clicks - something that is not helping anyone.

Another suggestion is to have a better backlinks tool. Especially for niche websites finding your backlinks especially the natural ones is an absolute nightmare.

[Awarn]

Google should look at how they crawl pages or tweak their spider. I find it very interesting that my sitemap and WMT show 12K pages indexed. I know there are at least 10K products. However under the structured data webpages show 4K and products are a touch over 3K. That tells me the spider is not thoroughly digesting the pages. The strange part is the pages for the products are the same template so if you can index and find the structured data for 3K why can't you find the other 7K. Probably because the bot isn't working properly. I see a slow gradual increase but I find it strange the crawl says they are hitting hundreds and thousands of pages a day yet you appear to missing almost 2/3 of the site? Truly makes me question how good any of the WMT stats are. I do find the data on structured data area does seem to be more accurate to how the actual site is than what the whole WMT data does in relation to the actual health of the site.

[vlexo]

1. If they could hold more than three months worth of keyword data then that would be awesome. Twelve months would be nice. Or even a yearly report to download 2012, '13, '14 data would be great.

2. Better search filtration for keywords and web page. Also a view of non-personalised average rank (guess that would make all the keyword tracking tools out there out of date).

[chewy]

1 - Can we please have real keyword data in GWMT when funneled back to GA?

Estimates don't count.

2 - And it would be wonderful to get back time on site and conversion data by organic keyword.

3 - While we are at it - can we have a real GoogleGuy or similar back on WebmasterWorld?

[lucy24]

a nominal yearly validation fee to simply prove that the site is still maintained and in business/available?

"Validated Search" option, with results limited to sites that participate in (or even know about) WMT or any other googloid venture?