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Last night at SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts announced that now most Google Webmaster Tools notifications will contain example URLs with specific examples of what is wrong with your site.
For example, if you had an unnatural link manual penalty, Google will share a few examples of the links that Google found to be unnatural. Or if you have a user generated content spam penalty, Google will show you example pages with where that content is.
The point is, Google is taking this to the next step to be even more transparent.
They aren't going to share ALL the URLs of the problems, but they will show you one, two or three examples, Matt Cutts said.
Google actually started doing this on a limited basis over a year ago with example inorganic links but it wasn't consistently for all manual spam notifications. It seems like going forward, almost all of these notifications will include examples.
Google's Kaspar Szymanski added on Google+:
We're trying to improve WMT messages over time to be more specific and actionable; we've received some feedback where we had only taken manual action on part of a site and the messages would have been more helpful if they indicated where the issue was. Going forward we'll be providing more information to the site owner, including exact URL samples.
Forum discussion at Google+ and WebmasterWorld.
Update: Here is a video from Matt Cutts on this update:
Comments:
Dean
06/12/2013 05:38 pm
Google is bitching around about U.S. government's transparency on FISA and PRISM. Now all Google does on transparency is sending out example URL's. What's about all the Panda and Penguin penalties? Where's the transparency? Your "Google Guidelines" is less than the "Patriotic Act". Both papers are used to suppress transparency. Google, don't throw bricks when you live in a glass house.
andyyo
06/12/2013 10:44 pm
I've noticed in just the last 3 days, Google try to reposition themselves as being transparent after the PRISM fallout...hmmm.....