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I am excited to announced Kaspar Szymanski, Google's search quality strategist will be joining us at SphinnCon Israel this January 9th in Jerusalem.
Kaspar joined Google in 2006 and works as a search quality strategist supporting search quality efforts across European languages. He is also the Google guide for the German and the Polish Webmaster help groups. Kaspar has a degree in information science from the Stuttgart Media University in Germany.
You can follow Kaspar on Twitter at @kas_tweets. He actually tweeted about it saying "ירושלים בינואר SphinnCon -אני מגיע להציג ב."
I will be interviewing Kaspar on stage at SphinnCon Israel, so if you want your chance to ask him a question, please submit your questions in the comments below. I will make sure to leave plenty of time for open question and answers. Kaspar also agreed to do site clinics if time and the network permits.
Imagine, a Googler looking at your site and giving you one-on-one advice!
If you are in the region in early January or just want an excuse to visit one of the most historic places in the world - make sure to sign up for SphinnCon Israel.
Don't forget, submit your questions in the comments below.
Comments:
Gilad Sasson
12/27/2010 09:16 pm
My first Q that pops for Kaspar: Which German and Scandinavian link mediators are truly considered as Quality traffic generators and where should I report the ones who take your money, drop the links and disappear?
Barry Schwartz
12/27/2010 09:33 pm
Gilad. :)
Linda
12/27/2010 10:33 pm
It became very popular these days to have on a website links to social networks, like Facebook twitter etc. My question is if every page on ones website links out to lets say facebook, so that is lets say is 2000 links to Facebook, would this lower my rankings in any way?
CmsBuffet
12/28/2010 12:33 am
Google Instant View. What are the parameters Google uses to add the orange-frame-highlighted-text?
Raya Wasser
12/28/2010 03:41 am
Question for Kaspar: What do we need to know about social media feeds showing up in search results? Are we heading to a time where a mention about our company and product in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn will be equal to or more powerful than info we have on our website? Or are we already there?
Sir Ching
12/28/2010 04:14 am
What are the most significant features in the google.com search algorithm that are not yet implemented in google.co.il search algorithm? Are they about to be implemented soon?
Linda
12/28/2010 05:02 am
Question for Kaspar: Being the duplicate content isn't a penalty, should SEO focus on duplicate content, or should we leave it up to Google to deal with these issues.
Hetal Shah
12/28/2010 11:19 am
My Question is Here: Why Google limits only one Adsense Account to Associate with One Analyics Account? What if my friend wants to add his Adsense account to my Analytics account?
Autoins
12/28/2010 01:17 pm
Maybe we can hear an explanation to Google Israel's VERY odd behavior regarding super competitive terms, especially car insurance
Clifton Flack
12/28/2010 03:32 pm
How about explaining exactly how Google reward and punish sites based on Site Performance.... in Webmaster tools we see an 'average' speed but we know sites perform differently in around the world... are we rewarded and punished globally for the average or locally ?
Erik Vigmostad
12/28/2010 03:38 pm
Google's ranking algorithms are based in large part on an academic model of "the more papers (sites) citing (linking) to you paper (site)" the more important it is. I can see this for informational sites, reference sites, educational sites, sites that offer services, etc. But for an ECommerce site selling products, who would link to it other than affiliates (often via a redirect and therefore not counting as a link) seeking a percentage? All efforts to get sites to link to an ECommerce site are somewhat artificial and Google has spawned an entire industry of people helping to get these links.
Vgeula
12/29/2010 07:17 pm
Barry and Kaspar Shalom. We combine English and Hebrew text on one webpage at virtualgeula.com I have frequently asked and no one seems to know: 1. Should there be separate English and Hebrew Keywords and Description metatags ? 2. Should Hebrew and English be combined in one metatag ? 3. Does it make a difference at all ? 4. Does Google's robot read the Hebrew metatags at all ? Yaakov Rosenes vgeula@gmail.com
KimmDesign
12/30/2010 07:51 pm
One question: 1. I realize that page rank (PR) lost its weighty significance a while back; nonetheless, does it still have any significance at all? And if so, what?
Dan Perach
01/06/2011 09:26 am
Div or Tables?
Webmaster_help-guide-pl
01/14/2011 04:37 pm
@Dan Perach: I’d say it doesn’t really matter; whatever you can do to make your page load faster :) Think about the visitors of your site; http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html @KimmDesign: While PageRank is still one important ranking factor of about 200+ we take into account, you really should not fret about it. We calculate it constantly, however the visible Toolbar PageRank is being updated only occasionally. @Vgeula: Yes, we are able to read Hebrew content in meta tags. But you probably should not mix English and Hebrew on the same page, neither within meta tags nor in the content of your site. I believe it does make a difference to have your content organized by languages. There’s a great post on multilingual websites, that I’d recommend http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multilingual-websites.html @Erik Vigmostad: Actually, you might be surprised how often compelling commercial content sites get great natural links. Are you familiar with my post on that topic? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/quality-links-to-your-site.html @Clifton Flack: Site performance is by no means a punishment tool for slower loading sites. Instead, think of it as a way to potentially boost your sites visibility in the Google index, if you fully utilize the site performance tools potential :) @Autoins: Google SERP’s are in a constant flux, which is why position changes for websites are nothing to be concerned about. We have some great features in the Webmaster Tools to help you track how your site is performing on certain keywords. However, if you suspect ranking sites to be taking advantage of spammy techniques, why don’t you bring them to our attention via the spam report? https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en @Hetal Shah: That is an interesting question, however I am afraid it is slightly off my area of expertise. Did you try to ask the question on the Google Analytics Help Forum? http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics?hl=en @Linda: Actually we are quiet good in identifying duplicate content, however you can help us, too. I’d highly recommend our posts on how to utilize the canonical tag and how to apply cross domain canonical when appropriate. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html @Sir Ching: While our algorithms are being applied globally, the representation of search results may vary, depending on the language. I can not announce any particular upcoming feature releases but let me assure you that the teams in charge work hard to provide the same great search experience to our Hebrew speaking users, too. If you’d like to be one of the first people to know about exciting Google news, why don’t you follow me (@kas_tweets), Tomer (@tScourge) or Fili (@filiber) on Twitter? We’ll make sure to share anything cool asap :) @Raya Wasser: I believe this really depends on the relevance of the query. While social media sites might provide a good user experience at times, in my opinion content articles will prevail particularly on more sophisticated, long tail search queries. @CmsBuffet: Well, feel free to dig into the JavaScript on our website :) I’d also take a look on the FAQ site http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-instant-previews @Linda: No, having a lot of outgoing links from your site to a social network is not likely to impact visibility of your site in the Google index in any way. @Gilad Sasson: I believe any link mediators providing nofollowed links are legit. Please feel free to bring all others to our attention via our paid link report. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736 @everyone who did not get a chance to ask their questions at the Sphinncon, please feel free to submit them here or come and talk to me at any conference you see me too. I’ll try to address them :)
Barry Schwartz
01/14/2011 05:04 pm
FYI, this is Kaspar replying, just in case the name above doesn't seem legit. I can verify this is Kaspar from Google.
mssfldt
01/14/2011 05:36 pm
Hi, Google wants to have quality websites. This includes correct spelling. Is the correct spelling a ranking factor? Should I correct mistakes in blog-comments? Thanks, Martin