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Google posted a very generic how we help webmasters blog post the other day during Google I/O. One thing Danny Sullivan pointed out on Twitter that the forums has a way for people to reply privately without others seeing it.
I am not sure if this is new, he doesn't say if it is new, but there is a button there that says "reply to post author privately." Here is a screen shot of the button:
I personally don't remember seeing this button, I do spend a lot of time in the Google forums, but I don't often post for help.
Google wrote:
While how a website behaves on the web is openly visible to all who can see it, we know that some website owners prefer not to make it known their website has a problem in a public forum. There’s no shame in asking for support, but if you have an issue for your website that seems sensitive—for which you don’t think you can share all the details publicly—you can call out that you would prefer to share necessary details only with someone experienced and who is willing to help, using the forum’s “Private Reply” feature.
I know a lot of people who do not like to post issues in a public forum, so I guess this solves a bit of that?
Update: I confirmed this is not a new feature.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
