The Google Webmaster Tools team released two new features in the past two days that are very welcomed by the webmaster community. They announced new notifications of hacks and spam and a new way to share your verified sites with others.
Hack & Spam Notifications:
Starting this month, we will notify more webmasters of more potential issues we've detected on their websites, including:
- Spammy or abused user-generated content
- Abused forum pages or egregious amounts of comment spam
- Suspected hacking
These notifications are meant to alert webmasters of potential issues and provide next steps on how to get their sites fixed and back into Google's search results. If it pertains to a hacking or abuse issue, the notification will point to example URLs exhibiting this type of behavior. These notifications will run in parallel with our existing malware notifications.
Sharing Verified Sites:
In the past, the only way to share data in Google Webmaster Tools for sites was to have each person verify the site under their webmaster tools account. That is no longer needed. Now, you can add people easily.
(1) Go to the Verification home page (2) Click on "Verification details" for the site you want to share (3) Click on the Add a user..." button on that page (4) Type in the user's Google account and it will be shared
Note: You can remove that ownership at any time by clicking the "Unverify" link next to the person's email address on the Details page.
These features are very welcomed.
Forum discussion on the new messages and alerts at WebmasterWorldand on new sharing feature at Google Webmaster Help.
