Tag Archives: hangout

Join our first Virtual Webmaster Unconference


While the in-person Webmaster Conference events are still on hold, we continue to share insights and information with you in the Webmaster Conference Lightning Talks series on our YouTube channel. But we understand that you might be missing the connection during live events, so we’d like to invite you to join a new event format: the first Virtual Webmaster Unconference, on August 26th, at 8AM PDT!

What is the Virtual Webmaster Unconference?

Because we want you to actively participate in the event, this is neither a normal Webmaster Conference nor a typical online conference. This event isn't just for you - it's your event. In particular, the word "Unconference" means that you get to choose which sessions you want to attend and become an active part of. You will shape the event by taking part in discussions, feedback sessions and similar formats that need your input. 


It's your chance to collaborate with other webmasters, SEOs, developers, digital marketers, publishers and Google product teams, such as Search Console and Google Search, and help us to deliver more value to you and the community.

How does it work?

We have opened the registration for a few more spots in the event again. If you're seeing "registration is closed", the spots have filled up already. We may run more events in the future, so keep an eye on our Twitter feed and this blog.



As part of the registration process, we will ask you to select two sessions you would like to participate in. Only the sessions that receive the most votes will be scheduled to take place on the event day, so make sure you pick your favorite ones before August 19th!


As we have limited spots, we might have to select attendees based on background and demographics to get a good mix of perspectives in the event. We will let you know by August 20th if your registration is confirmed. Once your registration is confirmed, you will receive the invitation for the Google Meet call on August 26th with all the other participants, the MC and the session leads. You can expect to actively participate in the sessions you're interested in via voice and/or video call through Google Meet. Please note that the sessions will not be recorded; we will publish a blog post with some of the top learnings after the event.


We have very interesting proposals lined up for you to vote on, as well as other fun surprises. Save your spot before August 19th and join the first ever Virtual Webmaster Unconference!

Posted by Martin Splitt, Search Relations Team

2018, celebrating our global Webmaster community

2018 has been a very important year for our webmaster support community. What has happened? There’s been a program rebranding, a global summit, and loads of community hangouts.


In October, the former Top Contributors became Gold Product Experts, and the Rising Stars, Silver Product Experts. This rebranding happened throughout all of the product forums and these are some of the new badges and names:
Silver Product Expert: Newer members who are developing their product knowledge
Gold Product Expert: Trusted members who are knowledgeable and active contributors


In November, we invited all of our Gold Product Experts from every Google help forum (such as Blogger or Google My Business) to a global summit. This meetup happened in the Google campus in Sunnyvale, California. Out of the almost 550 attendees from all over the world, around 70 were Webmaster Gold Product Experts. Coming from 25 different countries, this was the second biggest community that attended the event. Later that month, another very successful meetup took place in Moscow, gathering 23 Russian speaking Product Experts (of which 10 were Webmasters).

Gold Webmaster Product Experts at this year’s global summit in Sunnyvale.

Many of the attendees acknowledged that this “was a really valuable time”, that the “sessions were very insightful and interesting” and that “the entire event was fantastic!”.


This knowledgeable group of super users provides invaluable help in 16 languages to more than 2 million users a year, about everything related to Search, Structured Data or Search Console in the forums.


And what is the profile of our community? Many of our Product Experts (Silver and Gold) are site owners who started out on the Webmaster forums (some more than a decade ago) by asking questions about their own sites. After their issues were fixed, most of them stayed to give back to the community, as they realized that their expertise could be of use to others. We want to thank all of our experts for their dedication and constant knowledge sharing to help users who are having trouble with their websites.


Throughout the year, we’ve held 75 live office hours hangouts on the Webmaster YouTube channel, in English, Japanese, German, Hindi, French, and we’ve also kick started the calls in Spanish. On those hangouts, anyone can raise their questions to the Google team directly and interact with one another.


If you’re interested in joining the community, meeting everyone and helping other users on the Webmaster forums, you can learn more on the Product Experts program website. We are always excited to meet users from diverse backgrounds and skill-sets!


Looking forward to what 2019 will bring to our community... And looking forward to meeting you!




Written by Aurora Morales, Trust & Safety Outreach team