In the spirit of the holidays, here at Google we wanted to take the time to help out those who
spend their days making our world a better place: non-profit organizations. A few weeks back, we
asked webmasters of non-profits to
submit their organization's site
to our Search Quality team for analysis. After some number crunching and trend analysis, we're
back to report on general areas for improvement and to guide you towards some useful resources!
Making our list, checking it twice
First, we'd like thank all of the amazing organizations who participated by submitting their
sites. We got some great results, and are excited about all the diverse non-profit causes out
there.
Our analysis will take place in the following two posts. The first post will focus on cleaning up
HTML tags in your source code, while the second will examine improving user experience via better
content accessibility.
Visions of... URLs... dancing in our heads
The great news is, every single site submitted had at least one or two areas to tweak to make it
even better! So this information should be helpful to everyone out there, big or small. Just to
whet your appetites, here's a quick list of items that will not be addressed in our following
posts, but that had some room for improvement in a large percentage of submitted sites:
Keep an eye on proper
canonicalization:
56% of analyzed non-profit sites could improve their canonicalization practices. You can read
more about canonicalization in
this blog post
from a previous site clinic.
Make sure your volunteer/support sections are visible: 29% of our submissions could improve
their sites by making their support, volunteer, or donation sections easier to find. A great
way to accomplish this is to add a donations tab to your navigation bar so it's just one click
away at all times.
Protect your confidential information: Lots of non-profits, especially those in the medical
industry, deal with some very important and confidential information. Read up on how to
control your crawled and indexed content,
and remember to protect confidential content through proper authentication measures.
Make your Flash sites search engine friendly: We saw some beautiful sites running on Flash.
Search engines have a hard time understanding Flash files, and we're working to improve Flash
comprehension on our end, but here are some discussion points on how you can
help us understand your Flash content.
Posted by Alexi Douvas and Jen Lee, Search Quality Evaluation Team
Contributors: Aditya Goradia, Brandon Falls, Charlene Perez, Diara Dankert, Michael Wyszomierski,
and Nelson Bradley
[[["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\u003eThis blog post provides analysis and guidance for non-profit organizations to improve their websites based on submissions to Google's Search Quality team.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe analysis focuses on two main areas: cleaning up HTML tags in source code and improving user experience through better content accessibility.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eCommon areas for improvement across many submitted sites include canonicalization, visibility of volunteer/support sections, protection of confidential information, and search engine optimization for Flash sites.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWhile the post highlights general trends and actionable insights, some information might be outdated due to the passage of time.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe upcoming posts will delve deeper into HTML and content accessibility improvements, offering specific guidance for website enhancement.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Google's Search Quality team analyzed non-profit websites submitted for review. They identified common areas for improvement, including canonicalization practices (56% of sites). Another area was increasing visibility of volunteer/donation sections, as 29% could improve this. Protecting confidential information and optimizing Flash sites for search engines were also highlighted. The analysis is split into two posts focusing on cleaning HTML and improving content accessibility. These issues applied to the majority of websites, which all needed at least one area of improvement.\n"],null,["# A helping holiday hand: Website clinic for non-profits\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\nTuesday, December 20, 2010\n\n\n*Cross-posted on the\n[Google Grants Blog](https://googlegrants.blogspot.com/2010/12/helping-holiday-hand-website-clinic-for.html)*\n\nA New Year's resolution\n-----------------------\n\n\nIn the spirit of the holidays, here at Google we wanted to take the time to help out those who\nspend their days making our world a better place: non-profit organizations. A few weeks back, we\nasked webmasters of non-profits to\n[submit their organization's site](/search/blog/2010/10/website-clinic-call-for-submissions)\nto our Search Quality team for analysis. After some number crunching and trend analysis, we're\nback to report on general areas for improvement and to guide you towards some useful resources!\n\nMaking our list, checking it twice\n----------------------------------\n\n\nFirst, we'd like thank all of the amazing organizations who participated by submitting their\nsites. We got some great results, and are excited about all the diverse non-profit causes out\nthere.\n\n\nOur analysis will take place in the following two posts. The first post will focus on cleaning up\nHTML tags in your source code, while the second will examine improving user experience via better\ncontent accessibility.\n\nVisions of... URLs... dancing in our heads\n------------------------------------------\n\n\nThe great news is, every single site submitted had at least one or two areas to tweak to make it\neven better! So this information should be helpful to everyone out there, big or small. Just to\nwhet your appetites, here's a quick list of items that will not be addressed in our following\nposts, but that had some room for improvement in a large percentage of submitted sites:\n\n- Keep an eye on proper [canonicalization](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls): 56% of analyzed non-profit sites could improve their canonicalization practices. You can read more about canonicalization in [this blog post](https://googleindia.blogspot.com/2010/02/india-site-clinic-part-i.html) from a previous site clinic.\n- Make sure your volunteer/support sections are visible: 29% of our submissions could improve their sites by making their support, volunteer, or donation sections easier to find. A great way to accomplish this is to add a donations tab to your navigation bar so it's just one click away at all times.\n- Protect your confidential information: Lots of non-profits, especially those in the medical industry, deal with some very important and confidential information. Read up on how to [control your crawled and indexed content](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/control-what-you-share), and remember to protect confidential content through proper authentication measures.\n- Make your Flash sites search engine friendly: We saw some beautiful sites running on Flash. Search engines have a hard time understanding Flash files, and we're working to improve Flash comprehension on our end, but here are some discussion points on how you can [help us understand your Flash content](/search/blog/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing).\n\n\nPosted by Alexi Douvas and Jen Lee, Search Quality Evaluation Team \n\nContributors: Aditya Goradia, Brandon Falls, [Charlene Perez](http://www.linkedin.com/in/char-perez), Diara Dankert, [Michael Wyszomierski](https://wysz.com/about/),\nand Nelson Bradley"]]
