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Google has been adding more and more value to their Webmaster tools which really should help those of you just starting a Website or perhaps just need more help in attracting traffic. Either way, one of the best tools available is the ability to look at the top search query data. Google is making that data even more valuable.

Google announced today that Webmasters can now see up to 90 days of search query historical data. The previous limit was set to only 35 days, so thats a huge jump in data. It should give Webmasters a better idea of how their Website has been doing over the past few months instead of just the last month.

You can go back to the full 90 days by using the same date picker youve always used to see search query data in between particular dates. Heres what a full 90 days of search data looks like:

As always, there is a catch though. You cant view 90 days worth of search data if you want to see changes with the previous time period. Changes are only available with 30 days of search data. Changes are also turned off by default, but you can turn them on with a button between the graph and the table.

There are a few other changes being made to Webmaster Tools. One of them is that users can now view basic search data as soon as site ownership is verified. The other change is that Google now collects the top 2,000 queries that your site gets clicks for. They feel that 98 percent of sites will have full coverage in this regard, but a few Webmasters may see less than 2,000 results.

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Google Adds More Top Search Query Data

Today, Google has expanded the historical search query data to 90 days. The number of queries reported has increased as well: the report will now list the top 2,000 for each day of the selected date range (vs. the previous top 1,000). This is great news, as this is data not available anywhere else and when looking at trends, the more information, the better. Google has made a few other minor adjustments to this data recently. So if you use Google webmaster tools query data, see below for all the details of how these reports work.

First, a refresher on what this data is all about. The top search queries report (available in Google webmaster tools for sites youve verified ownership of by selecting Your site on the web > Search queries) lists the top queries that brought traffic to your site from Google organic search (from all countries and properties).

For the selected data range, the report shows the total number of queries that brought traffic to the site, the total impressions and clicks the site received, and the number of impressions and clicks for the reported top queries.

For each query, the report notes:

You can click into any query to get more specific data, including the pages that ranked for the query, and the impressions, clicks, and click-through rate at each position the site ranked.

Use the filters to drill into what queries brought traffic from Google properties (web, video, images, mobile web, and smartphones) and from specific countries.

As I explained in a previous post, the numbers can be tricky and its important to understand what data youre really looking at. These reports now list the top 2,000 queries that brought traffic to the site for the selected time period. That means that if a query wasnt one of the top 2,000 for any days in the selected range, data wont be reported for it. In the example below, the time period is 30 days, but only 6 of those days have data reported for the query (as illustrated by the dots in the graph).

When generating or downloading the data, keep in mind the following:

Its great that Google is offering more data (both number of queries and length of time). Just be sure that as you use this data, you understand exactly what youre looking at and comparing (both in terms of data range and date reported per day).

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Google Webmaster Tools Expands Query Data to 90 Days

62nd Annual Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations Announced; Nice Work Receives Nine Nods

By Andrew Gans 23 Apr 2012

Tony Award nominee Lily Rabe (The Merchant of Venice, Seminar) and Outer Critics Circle nominee Richard Thomas (The Stendhal Syndrome, Race) announced the 62nd annual Outer Critics Circle Award nominations April 23 at the Friars' Club in Manhattan.

Outer Critics Circle Awards honor the best of Broadway and Off-Broadway.

The new Gershwin musical Nice Work If You Can Get It received nine nominations, the most of any production of the season. The new musicals Newsies and Once each received seven nominations.

Nominations follow:

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OUTSTANDING NEW BROADWAY MUSICAL Bonnie & Clyde Newsies Once Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

OUTSTANDING NEW OFF-BROADWAY PLAY Blood and Gifts The School for Lies Sons of the Prophet Tribes

OUTSTANDING NEW OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL Death Takes a Holiday Lucky Guy Play It Cool Queen of the Mist

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62nd Annual Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations Announced; Nice Work Receives Nine Nods

PHOTO CALL: 2012 Lucille Lortel Awards Nominee Reception

By Krissie Fullerton 18 Apr 2012

The 2012 Lucille Lortel Award nominees were honored with an April 16 reception held at the Times Square Planet Hollywood.

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The 27th annual Lortel Awards, celebrating Off-Broadway work, will be presented May 6 at the 7 PM at the Skirball Center.

Representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors' Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, the Lucille Lortel Foundation, in addition to theatre journalists and academics and other Off-Broadway professionals, serve on the Lortel Voting Committee. The Lucille Lortel Awards ceremony is produced by special arrangement with the Lucille Lortel Foundation.

The 2012 Lortel Award nominations follow:

Outstanding Play Blood and Gifts Produced by Lincoln Center Theater; Written by J. T. Rogers Milk Like Sugar Produced by Playwrights Horizons and Women's Project Theater; Written by Kirsten Greenidge Sons of the Prophet Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company; Written by Stephen Karam The Big Meal Produced by Playwrights Horizons; Written by Dan LeFranc The School For Lies Produced by Classic Stage Company; Written by David Ives

Outstanding Musical Once Produced by New York Theatre Workshop; Book by Enda Walsh, Music and Lyrics by Glen Hansard and Markta Irglov Queen of the Mist Produced by Transport Group; Words and Music by Michael John LaChiusa SILENCE! The Musical Produced by Victoria Lang, Rich Affannato, Donna Trinkoff in association with Scott Kirschenbaum, Theater Mogul, Kitefliers Studio and Terry Schnuck; Music and Lyrics by Jon Kaplan and Al Kaplan, Book by Hunter Bell, Adapted from the screenplay Silence! The Musical by Jon and Al Kaplan The Blue Flower Produced by Second Stage Theatre; By Jim Bauer and Ruth Bauer The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World Produced by Playwrights Horizons and New York Theatre Workshop; Book by Joy Gregory, Music by Gunnar Madsen, Lyrics by Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen, Story by Joy Gregory, Gunnar Madsen, and John Langs

Outstanding Revival Blood Knot Produced by Signature Theatre; Written by Athol Fugard The Lady from Dubuque Produced by Signature Theatre; Written by Edward Albee Look Back in Anger Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company; Written by John Osborne The Cherry Orchard Produced by Classic Stage Company; Written by Anton Chekhov, Translated by John Christopher Jones The Maids Produced by Red Bull Theater; Written by Jean Genet, Translated by Bernard Frechtman

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PHOTO CALL: 2012 Lucille Lortel Awards Nominee Reception

Once again, webmasters are complaining about what may have been a major update from Google. Theyve taken to the Google Webmaster Help forums to express their grievances, although to be fair, its not all bad for everybody. When sites drop, others rise. Thats how it works.

Barry Schwartz, at Search Engine Roundtable, who wonders if it could be the overly SEO penalty Matt Cutts discussed at SXSW last month, points to 11 separate forum threads with complaints. Theres definitely something going on.

Of course, in these situations, the Panda update is always mentioned. Weve reached out to Google for more info. Sometimes they respond. Sometimes they dont. It will most likely be one of the generic we make changes every day kind of responses, and well probably have to wait until the end of April or the beginning of May to get the real list of changes Google has made.

The last time there was a known Panda update, Google went so far as to tweet about it. They know people want to know when this happens. That doesnt necessarily mean theyll tweet every time, but I wouldnt be surprised. This time, no tweet from Google so far.

For a refresher on the overly SEO penalty Schwartz speaks of, read the following:

Google Is Working On Making SEO Matter Less Google Webmaster Central Creator Talks Googles New Google Changes New Google Changes: Really A Matter Of Mom And Pop? SEO DOs And DONTS According To Google: Mixed Signals?

Other things have been costing sites lately. For one, Googles de-indexing of paid blog/link networks caused a lot of webmasters to get messages from Google about questionable links. This week, Google sent out messages to 20,000 sites informing them that they appeared to be hacked.

If youre rankings have fallen, one thing you may want to consider is taking authorship more seriously (and that includes Google+ engagement), though even that appears to be having some issues on the tracking side.

Last week, we spoke with Dani Horowitz whose site, DaniWeb, has been hit by Google, yet again, after recovering from multiple iterations of the Panda update.

Not only does Google make changes every day, it runs even more experiments, with subsets of users. Matt Cutts recently talked about how Google runs 20,000 search experiments a year.

The rest is here:
Major Google Update Suspected, Yet Again, By A Bunch Of Webmasters