Helpful documents to Read Before Asking Google a Question

Introduction:

Whenever faced with a problems, many users are often quick to turn to Google for help. Some use Google Search while others, especially webmasters and website owners, contact Google on one of the various platforms available, from the Google Webmaster Tools forum to contact forms such as the one for reconsideration requests. A lot of the users' questions require in-depth answers, something which cannot be answered in a forum or in an email. Therefore, Google is rolling out a new feature that will help users find in-depth articles for their queries. For webmasters, we'll share some useful articles and documents from Google that they should read before directly contacting Google.

Helpful resources

Over the years, Google has compiled huge information resources that answer most of the common questions asked by webmasters. Here's a list of Google blogs you need to follow in order to get the latest news, tips, and help regarding your everyday questions.

• Google Official Blog
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Google AdSense Blog
• Google Analytics Blog
• Inside Search Blog
• Google Developers Blog
• Google Enterprise Blog

Here's a list of some useful documents containing various FAQs, policies, TOS, and guidelines

• Google Privacy Policy
• Google Terms of Service (read our shortened version)

Google AdSense

• Google AdSense Academy
• Google AdSense policies
• Policy and Traffic quality guidelines
• AdSense Optimization checklist
• Reports and Earnings

Google AdWords

• Google AdWords Policies
• Learn about AdWords

Google Analytics

• Google Analytics TOS
• Google Analytics tutorial and help
• Google Analytics Features

Google Webmaster Tools

• Google Webmaster FAQ
• Google Webmaster Help Center
• Webmaster Academy
• Webmaster Guidelines

More

• All about Reconsideration requests
• About Google Index
• Rich Snippets and Microdata

For users

For the ordinary user, Google is rolling out in-depth article search that will have a different ranking algorithm, and will provide users with in-depth articles, covering their broad queries. This new algorithm will take into account various signals, and will deeply analyze the quality of the content, and then rank articles on how well they cover a certain topic.

These new results are currently available on Google English. And they will only appear for certain search queries that correspond to in-depth research.

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Although Google hasn't said this, but we've a feeling that this new type of search will heavily take AuthorRank into account, because in an earlier video, Google said that AuthorRank will be topic specific. Meaning that if an Author ranks high for "search engine marketing", he most definitely can't be a good authority on cardiac surgery. Hence, every Author will have his area of expertise where he can excel and gain AuthorRank. So most probably, AuthorRank will play an important role in ascertaining the authority of an article.

Helping Google understand article 'depth'

So, how can you, as a webmaster, help Google algorithms understand your content better? Here are a few things you can do. We've already covered most of these in earlier posts. But we'll do a short round-up here.

• Use Schema.org Article Markup
• Use Google Authorship Markup
• Use pagination with "rel=prev" and "rel="next" markup (we'll cover this in a future post)
• Avoid mistakes with re'-canonical
• Tell Google about your organizational logo

If you've done all (or most of) these things, you're good to go! Remember; Always provide quality content, and you'll never have to worry about getting penalized, or getting knocked out of any search results, because quality speaks for itself! Peace :)