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Getting good, relevant answers when you search shouldn’t depend on what device you’re using. You should get the best answer possible, whether you’re on a phone, desktop or tablet. Last year, we started using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal on mobile searches. Today we’re announcing that beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.

If you've already made your site mobile-friendly, you will not be impacted by this update. If you need support with your mobile-friendly site, we recommend checking out the Mobile-Friendly Test and the Webmaster Mobile Guide, both of which provide guidance on how to improve your mobile site. And remember, the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank well if it has great, relevant content.

If you have any questions, please go to the Webmaster help forum.

Posted by Klemen Kloboves, Software Engineer
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Update, 20/04/2016: This change is now live

As technology on the web changes, we periodically update the user-agents we use for Googlebot. Next month, we will be updating the smartphone user-agent of Googlebot:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2272.96 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
(Googlebot smartphone user-agent starting from April 18, 2016)

Today, we use the following smartphone user-agent for Googlebot:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12F70 Safari/600.1.4 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
(Current Googlebot smartphone user-agent)

We’re updating the user-agent string so that our renderer can better understand pages that use newer web technologies. Our renderer evolves over time and the user-agent string indicates that that it is becoming more similar to Chrome than Safari. To make sure your site can be viewed properly by a wide range of users and browsers, we recommend using feature detection and progressive enhancement.

Our evaluation suggests that this user-agent change should have no effect on 99% of sites. The most common reason a site might be affected is if it specifically looks for a particular Googlebot user-agent string. User-agent sniffing for Googlebot is not recommended and is considered to be a form of cloaking. Googlebot should be treated like any other browser.

If you believe your site may be affected by this update, we recommend checking your site with the Fetch and Render Tool in Search Console (which has been updated with the new user-agent string) or by changing the user-agent string in Developer Tools in your browser (for example, via Chrome Device Mode). If you have any questions, we’re always happy to answer them in our Webmaster help forums.

Posted by Katsuaki Ikegami, Software Engineer

As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers free products to review or give away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

  1. Use the nofollow tag where appropriate

    Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:
    1. the company’s site
    2. the company’s social media accounts
    3. an online merchant’s page that sells the product
    4. a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
    5. the company’s mobile app on an app store
    Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.
  2. Disclose the relationship

    Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire post.
  3. Create compelling, unique content

    The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you're a blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources.

For more information, please drop by our Google Webmaster Central Help Forum.

Posted by the Google Webspam Team
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We’ve got a new URL!

You may have noticed the Google Webmaster Central blog has a new address: webmasters.googleblog.com.

That’s because starting today, Google is moving its blogs to a new domain to help people recognize when they’re reading an official blog from Google. These changes will roll out to all of Google’s blogs over time.

The previous address will redirect to the new domain, so your bookmarks and links will continue to work. Unfortunately, as with a custom domain change in Blogger, the Google+ comments on the blogs have been reset.

Thanks as always for reading—we’ll see you here again soon at webmasters.googleblog.com!

Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Zürich
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Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a global, industry-wide initiative, with publishers large and small all focused on the same goal: a better, faster mobile web.
We’ve had a great response to our English language AMP office hours, but we know that English isn’t everyone’s native language.

For the next two weeks, we’re rolling out a new series of office hours in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and Indonesian and invite everyone to learn about AMP in their native language. Product Managers, Technical Managers, & Engineers at Google, will get to speak in their native tongue, and answer any questions you may have on AMP.

First we will reintroduce you to AMP and how it works, before diving into the technical specs and various components of AMP. You can add your questions via the Q and A app on the event pages below, and we will answer them during the office hours. You can also watch them on the News Lab YouTube page after the event.
Check out the lineup below and join the discussion.

  • French
  • Italian
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 8 @ 1500 CET with Luca Forlin Head of International Play Newsstand Partnerships
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 15 @ 1500 CET with Flavio Palandri Antonelli, AMP Software Engineer
  • German
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 9 @ 1700 CET with Nadine Gerspacher, Partner Development Manager
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 18 @ 1600 CET with Paul Bakaus, Developer Advocate
  • Spanish
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 9 @ 1430 CET with Demian Renzulli, Technical Solutions Consultant
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 16 @ 1430 CET with Julian Toledo, Developer Advocate
  • Brazilian Portuguese
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 10 @ 1430 BRT with Carol Soler, Strategic Partner Manager
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 17 @ 1430 BRT with Breno Araújo, Technology Manager
  • Russian
  • Japanese
  • Indonesian

Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager
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