Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

Google Friend Connect introduces the social bar

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Update: The described product or service is no longer available. In our previous Google Friend Connect posts, we've enjoyed connecting with you, the webmasters, and hearing your feedback about Friend Connect. We're now standing on our own two feet -- find us over at the new Social Web Blog where we just announced the new social bar feature.

The social bar packages many of the basic social functions -- sign-in, site activities, comments, and members -- into a single strip that appears at the top or bottom of your website. You can use it alone, or use it to complement your existing social gadgets, by putting it on the top or bottom of as many of your webpages as you want.

For anyone visiting your site, the social bar offers a snapshot of the activity taking place within your website's community. One click on any these features produces a convenient, interactive drop-down gadget, so users get all the functionality of the Friend Connect gadgets, while you save real estate on your website. With the social bar, visitors can:

Join or sign in to your site, view and edit their profiles, and change their personal settings.
View recent activity on your website, including new members and posts on any of your pages.
Post on your wall or read and reply to others' comments.
See the other members of your site, check out other peoples' profiles, and become friends. Users can also find out if any of their existing friends are members of your site.

Watch this quick video to learn how easy it is to add a social bar to your website:

To try out the social bar before deciding whether to add it to your website, visit:
http://www.ossamples.com/socialmussie/

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager, Google Friend Connect

Open redirect URLs: Is your site being abused?

Friday, January 30, 2009

No one wants malware or spammy URLs inserted onto their domain, which is why we all try to follow good security practices. But what if there were a way for spammers to take advantage of your site, without ever setting a virtual foot in your server?

There is, by abusing open redirect URLs.

Webmasters face a number of situations where it's helpful to redirect users to another page. Unfortunately, redirects left open to any arbitrary destination can be abused. This is a particularly onerous form of abuse because it takes advantage of your site's functionality rather than exploiting a simple bug or security flaw. Spammers hope to use your domain as a temporary "landing page" to trick email users, searchers and search engines into following links which appear to be pointing to your site, but actually redirect to their spammy site.

We at Google are working hard to keep the abused URLs out of our index, but it's important for you to make sure your site is not being used in this way. Chances are you don't want users finding URLs on your domain that push them to a screen full of unwanted porn, nasty viruses and malware, or phishing attempts. Spammers will generate links to make the redirects appear in search results, and these links tend to come from bad neighborhoods you don't want to be associated with.

This sort of abuse has become relatively common lately so we wanted to get the word out to you and your fellow webmasters. First we'll give some examples of redirects that are actively being abused, then we'll talk about how to find out if your site is being abused and what to do about it.

Redirects being abused by spammers

We have noticed spammers going after a wide range of websites, from large well-known companies to small local government agencies. The list below is a sample of the kinds of redirect we have seen used. These are all perfectly legitimate techniques, but if they're used on your site you should watch out for abuse.

Scripts that redirect users to a file on the server—such as a PDF document—can sometimes be vulnerable. If you use a content management system (CMS) that allows you to upload files, you might want to make sure the links go straight to the file, rather than going through a redirect. This includes any redirects you might have in the downloads section of your site. Watch out for links like this:

example.com/go.php?url=
example.com/ie/ie40/download/?

Internal site search result pages sometimes have automatic redirect options that could be vulnerable. Look for patterns like this, where users are automatically sent to any page after the "url=" parameter:

example.com/search?q=user+search+keywords&url=

Systems to track clicks for affiliate programs, ad programs, or site statistics might be open as well. Some example URLs include:

example.com/coupon.jsp?code=ABCDEF&url=
example.com/cs.html?url=

Proxy sites, though not always technically redirects, are designed to send users through to other sites and therefore can be vulnerable to this abuse. This includes those used by schools and libraries. For example:

proxy.example.com/?url=

In some cases, login pages will redirect users back to the page they were trying to access. Look out for URL parameters like this:

example.com/login?url=

Scripts that put up an interstitial page when users leave a site can be abused. Lots of educational, government, and large corporate web sites do this to let users know that information found on outgoing links isn't under their control. Look for URLs following patterns like this:

example.com/redirect/
example.com/out?
example.com/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?

Is my site being abused?

Even if none of the patterns above look familiar, your site may have open redirects to keep an eye on. There are a number of ways to see if you are vulnerable, even if you are not a developer yourself.

Check if abused URLs are showing up in Google. Try a site: search on your site to see if anything unfamiliar shows up in Google's results for your site. You can add words to the query that are unlikely to appear in your content, such as commercial terms or adult language. If the query [site:example.com viagra] isn't supposed to return any pages on your site and it does, that could be a problem. You can even automate these searches with Google Alerts.

You can also watch out for strange queries showing up in the Top search queries section of Webmaster Tools. If you have a site dedicated to the genealogy of the landed gentry, a large number of queries for porn, pills, or casinos might be a red flag. On the other hand, if you have a drug info site, you might not expect to see celebrities in your top queries. Keep an eye on the Message Center in Webmaster Tools for any messages from Google.

Check your server logs or web analytics package for unfamiliar URL parameters (like "=http:" or "=//") or spikes in traffic to redirect URLs on your site. You can also check the pages with external links in Webmaster Tools.

Watch out for user complaints about content or malware that you know for sure can not be found on your site. Your users may have seen your domain in the URL before being redirected and assumed they were still on your site.

What you can do

Unfortunately there is no one easy way to make sure that your redirects aren't exploited. An open redirect isn't a bug or a security flaw in and of itself—for some uses they have to be left fairly open. But there are a few things you can do to prevent your redirects from being abused or at least to make them less attractive targets. Some of these aren't trivial; you may need to write some custom code or talk to your vendor about releasing a patch.

Change the redirect code to check the referer, since in most cases everyone coming to your redirect script legitimately should come from your site, not a search engine or elsewhere. You may need to be permissive, since some users' browsers may not report a referer, but if you know a user is coming from an external site you can stop or warn them.

If your script should only ever send users to an internal page or file (for example, on a page with file downloads), you should specifically disallow off-site redirects.

Consider using a whitelist of safe destinations. In this case your code would keep a record of all outgoing links, and then check to make sure the redirect is a legitimate destination before forwarding the user on.

Consider signing your redirects. If your website does have a genuine need to provide URL redirects, you can properly hash the destination URL and then include that cryptographic signature as another parameter when doing the redirect. That allows your own site to do URL redirection without opening your URL redirector to the general public.

If your site is really not using it, just disable or remove the redirect. We have noticed a large number of sites where the only use of the redirect is by spammers—it's probably just a feature left turned on by default.

Use robots.txt to exclude search engines from the redirect scripts on your site. This won't solve the problem completely, as attackers could still use your domain in email spam. Your site will be less attractive to attackers, though, and users won't get tricked via web search results. If your redirect scripts reside in a subfolder with other scripts that don't need to appear in search results, excluding the entire subfolder may even make it harder for spammers to find redirect scripts in the first place.

You can also use Webmaster Tools to remove URLs. Chances are that the spammers have also hacked and abused other sites to generate links to the spammed section of your site. If you see suspicious sites or spammed forums linking in, feel free to report those to us, preferably with the verified spam report form in Webmaster Tools.

Open redirect abuse is a big issue right now but we think that the more webmasters know about it, the harder it will be for the bad guys to take advantage of unwary sites. Please feel free to leave any helpful tips in the comments below or discuss in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Jason Morrison, Search Quality Team

Year in Review

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.
We launched a new Help Forum in English and Polish, with a broader rollout planned in other languages this year.
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.
To simplify the process of getting up and running on Webmaster Tools, we launched the Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program.
To reduce frustration felt by users when trying to access a URL which does not exist on a site, we created a 404 widget.
We enabled webmasters to view details of "404 Not Found" crawl errors.
Sitemaps keep getting better, including integration with Custom Search Engine and simplified submissions.
4 new members of our product development team joined us in '08 to work on many of these efforts:
- Josh Teague, User Experience Designer, soon-to-be-dad, Southern gentleman
- Tanya Gupta, Software Engineer, passionate community services volunteer, thrill-seeking skydiver
- Pooja Shah, Software Engineer, nature lover, enthusiastic cook always looking to experiment
- Javier Tordable, Software Engineer and International Man of Mystery

Thank you once again and we hope for another exciting and eventful year!

Written by Sagar Kamdar, Webmaster Tools Product Manager, in need of some Rock Band skillz

Adding a social playlist to your site

Thursday, January 15, 2009

As you're building your site, you may be looking for a simple way to provide fresh content that captures the attention of first time visitors and loyal users alike. They say that music brings people together, so what better way to engage your visitors than by inviting them to help build a unique, collaborative soundtrack for your website? Now, social application creator iLike has built a special version of their social playlist gadget for sites using Google Friend Connect.

Visitors can add their favorite songs
iLike's playlist gadget lets you and your visitors shape the site's "musical footprint" as a group. With this application, anyone visiting your website can listen to songs on the playlist, and if they sign in using Friend Connect, they can add their own favorites to the list. Of course, you can also add songs to the playlist, and as the site administrator, you have the ability to remove songs or change the order.

If you already have Friend Connect running on your website, you can add some musical flair in a matter of minutes with just a few clicks. Sign in at www.google.com/friendconnect, click "Social Gadgets," and you'll find the iLike "Playlist gadget" in the gallery.

Select the "Playlist gadget," and Friend Connect will automatically generate a snippet of code for you to copy-and-paste into your website's HTML. While you're there, you may also consider adding the "Wall gadget"—music can be a great conversation starter!

This iLike gadget is fully integrated with your existing Friend Connect account, so you can edit your website's playlist, moderate wall posts, and manage membership all from a single interface.

Like all of the social applications that work with Friend Connect, iLike's application is built using OpenSocial, and it's a great example of how a social application can foster a sense of community around a website. Any site using Friend Connect can host gadgets created by the OpenSocial developer community.

If you're a site owner who wants to begin adding social features to your website, visit Google Friend Connect. No programming is required!

If you're a developer interested in building a social application to run on the tens thousands of websites that are now using Google Friend Connect, learn more at www.opensocial.org.

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager - Google Friend Connect

Seamless verification of Google Sites and Blogger with Webmaster Tools

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Note: Verification of Blogger blogs in Webmaster Tools has changed significantly. Please see the more recent blog post "Verifying a Blogger blog in Webmaster Tools" for more details.

Verifying that you own a site is the first step towards accessing all of the great features Webmaster Tools has to offer, such as crawl errors and query statistics. The Google Sites and Blogger teams have worked hard to make site verification as simple as possible. In the following videos, I'll walk you through how to verify sites created in Google Sites and Blogger.

Google Sites:

Blogger:

These videos are available in our Help Center if you have additional questions about verifying a Google Site or Blogger blog with Webmaster Tools. And as always, you can find me and many other Googlers and webmasters in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Reid Yokoyama, Search Quality

A new Google Sitemap Generator for your website

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

It's been well over three years since we initially announced the Python Sitemap generator in June 2005. In this time, we've seen lots of people create great third-party Sitemap generators to help webmasters create better Sitemap files. While most Sitemap generators either crawl websites or list the files on a server, we have created a different kind of Sitemap generator that uses several ways to find URLs on your website and then allows you to automatically create and maintain different kinds of Sitemap files.

Google Sitemap Generator screenshot of the admin console

About Google Sitemap Generator

Our new open-source Google Sitemap Generator finds new and modified URLs based on your webserver's traffic, its log files, or the files found on the server. By combining these methods, Google Sitemap Generator can be very fast in finding these URLs and calculating relevant metadata, thereby making your Sitemap files as effective as possible. Once Google Sitemap Generator has collected the URLs, it can create the following Sitemap files for you:

XML Sitemaps for Web Search according to the sitemaps.org standard
Mobile Sitemaps for mobile-friendly websites
Code Search Sitemaps for source code that you make available to users

In addition, Google Sitemap Generator can send a ping to Google Blog Search for all of your new or modified URLs. You can optionally include the URLs of the Sitemap files in your robots.txt file as well as "ping" the other search engines that support the sitemaps.org standard.

Sending the URLs to the right Sitemap files is simple thanks to the web-based administration console. This console gives you access to various features that make administration a piece of cake while maintaining a high level of security by default.

Getting started

Google Sitemap Generator is a server plug-in that can be installed on both Linux/Apache and Microsoft IIS Windows-based servers. As with other server-side plug-ins, you will need to have administrative access to the server to install it. You can find detailed information for the installation in the Google Sitemap Generator documentation.

We're excited to release Google Sitemap Generator with the source code and hope that this will encourage more web hosters to include this or similar tools in their hosting packages!

Do you have any questions? Feel free to drop by our Help Group for Google Sitemap Generator or ask general Sitemaps question in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich

Preventing Virtual Blight: my presentation from Web 2.0 Summit

Monday, January 12, 2009

One of the things I'm thinking about in 2009 is how Google can be even more transparent and communicate more. That led me to a personal goal for 2009: if I give a substantial conference presentation (not just a question and answer session), I'd like to digitize the talk so that people who couldn't attend the conference can still watch the presentation.

In that spirit, here's a belated holiday present. In November 2008 I spoke on a panel about "Preventing Virtual Blight" at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. A few weeks later I ended up recreating the talk at the Googleplex and we recorded the video. In fact, this is a "director's cut" because I could take a little more time for the presentation. Here's the video of the presentation:

And if you'd like to follow along at home, I'll include the actual presentation as well:

You can also access the presentation directly. By the way thanks to Wysz for recording this not just on a shoestring budget but for free. I think we've got another video ready to go pretty soon, too.

Written by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team

Webmaster Central Blog

Google Friend Connect introduces the social bar

Open redirect URLs: Is your site being abused?

Year in Review

Adding a social playlist to your site

Seamless verification of Google Sites and Blogger with Webmaster Tools

A new Google Sitemap Generator for your website

Preventing Virtual Blight: my presentation from Web 2.0 Summit

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