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Thursday, January 22, 2009
2008 was another great year for the Webmaster Central team. We experienced tremendous user growth
with our blogs (97% increase in monthly pageviews), Help Center (25%), Help Forums (225%), and
Webmaster Tools (35%). We would like to welcome our new users that joined us in '08, and thank
our loyal and passionate user base that have been with us for the last couple of years. We focused
on two basic goals for 2008, and here's how we think we did:
Goal #1: Educate and grow our webmaster community
We had our first ever
online webmaster chat in February '08
to answer your top questions, and followed it up with three more. They have been incredibly
successful, and we're planning for more this year.
We'd like to send a special thank you to our
Bionic Posters,
who have played a huge part in supporting our growing community.
Localization has been a big focus for us, so we launched our blog and Help Center in additional
languages, and made
Webmaster Tools available in 40 languages.
We hope this makes it easier for people in other parts of the world to adopt our tools and gain
a better understanding of how search works.
Our SEO starter guide was released
and it has been one of our most successful articles to date.
We placed an emphasis on sharing material via
YouTube
and created seven video series totaling two hours of content. We kicked off '09 with a bang on
the video front with
Matt's "Virtual Blight" presentation.
Goal #2: Iterate early and often on Webmaster Tools
We launched
GData APIs
and
iGoogle gadgets,
allowing end users to access their data outside of Webmaster Tools in a way that makes sense to
them.
Managing a robots.txt file can be complicated, especially for first time webmasters, so we
launched a
robots.txt generator.
In our effort to be more transparent and proactive, we enhanced our Message Center to send out
messages such as the
infinite spaces
and
hackable site warning
notifications.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Webmaster Central experienced significant user growth across its platforms in 2008, including blogs, Help Center, Help Forums, and Webmaster Tools.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle focused on educating its webmaster community through online chats, localization efforts, new Help Forums, an SEO starter guide, and video content.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle improved Webmaster Tools with GData APIs, a robots.txt generator, enhanced Message Center, and features for managing 404 errors and sitemaps.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle expanded the Webmaster Tools team with four new product development members.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["In 2008, the Webmaster Central team saw significant user growth across its platforms. They focused on educating the webmaster community by launching online chats, localizing content, and releasing an SEO starter guide. They shared educational videos on YouTube and introduced a new Help Forum. They also iterated on Webmaster Tools by launching GData APIs and a robots.txt generator. They enhanced the Message Center, launched the Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program, created a 404 widget and improved sitemaps. Four new members joined the product development team.\n"],null,["# Year in Review\n\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore).\n\nThursday, January 22, 2009\n\n\n2008 was another great year for the Webmaster Central team. We experienced tremendous user growth\nwith our blogs (97% increase in monthly pageviews), Help Center (25%), Help Forums (225%), and\nWebmaster Tools (35%). We would like to welcome our new users that joined us in '08, and thank\nour loyal and passionate user base that have been with us for the last couple of years. We focused\non two basic goals for 2008, and here's how we think we did:\n\nGoal #1: Educate and grow our webmaster community\n-------------------------------------------------\n\n- We had our first ever [online webmaster chat in February '08](/search/blog/2008/03/join-us-for-online-live-chat-this) to answer your top questions, and followed it up with three more. They have been incredibly successful, and we're planning for more this year.\n- We'd like to send a special thank you to our [Bionic Posters](https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/bionic-posters), who have played a huge part in supporting our growing community.\n- Localization has been a big focus for us, so we launched our blog and Help Center in additional languages, and made [Webmaster Tools available in 40 languages](/search/blog/2008/12/webmaster-tools-in-40-languages). We hope this makes it easier for people in other parts of the world to adopt our tools and gain a better understanding of how search works.\n- We launched a [new Help Forum in English and Polish](/search/blog/2008/12/new-look-for-our-webmaster-help-group), with a broader rollout planned in other languages this year.\n- Our [SEO starter guide](/search/blog/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide) was released and it has been one of our most successful articles to date.\n- We placed an emphasis on sharing material via [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8F37FE1AB0B7FC3E) and created seven video series totaling two hours of content. We kicked off '09 with a bang on the video front with [Matt's \"Virtual Blight\" presentation](/search/blog/2009/01/preventing-virtual-blight-my).\n\nGoal #2: Iterate early and often on Webmaster Tools\n---------------------------------------------------\n\n- We launched [GData APIs](https://code.google.com/apis/webmastertools/) and [iGoogle gadgets](/search/blog/2008/04/improvements-to-igoogle-gadgets-for), allowing end users to access their data outside of Webmaster Tools in a way that makes sense to them.\n- Managing a robots.txt file can be complicated, especially for first time webmasters, so we launched a [robots.txt generator](/search/blog/2008/03/speaking-language-of-robots).\n- In our effort to be more transparent and proactive, we enhanced our Message Center to send out messages such as the [infinite spaces](/search/blog/2008/08/to-infinity-and-beyond-no) and [hackable site warning](/search/blog/2008/10/message-center-warnings-for-hackable) notifications.\n- To simplify the process of getting up and running on Webmaster Tools, we launched the [Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program](/search/blog/2008/07/helping-yourself-to-webmaster-tools).\n- To reduce frustration felt by users when trying to access a URL which does not exist on a site, we created a [`404` widget](/search/blog/2008/08/make-your-404-pages-more-useful).\n- We enabled webmasters to view [details of `404 Not Found` crawl errors](/search/blog/2008/10/webmaster-tools-shows-crawl-error).\n- Sitemaps keep getting better, including [integration with Custom Search Engine](/search/blog/2008/11/on-demand-sitemaps-for-custom-search) and [simplified submissions](/search/blog/2008/12/sitemap-submission-made-simple).\n- 4 new members of our product development team joined us in '08 to work on many of these efforts:\n - [Josh Teague](https://twitter.com/joshteague), User Experience Designer, soon-to-be-dad, Southern gentleman\n - Tanya Gupta, Software Engineer, passionate community services volunteer, thrill-seeking skydiver\n - [Pooja Shah](https://puju-s.blogspot.com/), Software Engineer, nature lover, enthusiastic cook always looking to experiment\n - [Javier Tordable](https://www.javiertordable.com/), Software Engineer and International Man of Mystery\n\nThank you once again and we hope for another exciting and eventful year!\n\n\nWritten by [Sagar Kamdar](https://twitter.com/skamdar),\nWebmaster Tools Product Manager, in need of some Rock Band skillz"]]
