Alrighty, first what is Google Webmaster Central? (Straight from the home page definition)

Google Webmasters Central is your one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.

Before I go into all of the negatives about Webmasters Central – how about some positives? Many of Webmaster Central members are very knowledgeable and in many cases can help out with web related questions but the problem relies in finding the quality posters. Google Webmasters Central is flooding with egotistical ‘know-it-all’s’ who probably can’t even figure out how to work their home toaster so how do you expect to get help from them? For sake of argument let’s refer to these ‘know-it-all‘ experts as Patty’s. Here’s a quick snapshot of a conversation you can expect…

Business owner: Hi, my name is Fred and I have a problem. I used to be ranked  #1 in Google for Fred’s Pizza Parlor and now I am not. In Google’s eyes it seems that my website is non existent. Please help – thanks.

Patty 1: Hey Fred, haha  looks like  someone  sabotaged your website.  I would fire your web guy. The links on your web-page are very misleading. You should fix them.

Business owner: Could you please be more specific?

Patty 2: Fred, don’t listen to Patty 1. He really has no idea what he’s talking about. Also, be careful not to talk bad to him on this forum like I am. He belongs to a vicious clique and will flame you all day long.

Patty 1: Hey shut-up Patty 2. Why don’t you give him some better advice? Hey, Business owner – why did you edit your post? Are you some kind of undercover Yahoo person? I mean seriously who are you and why did you edit your  post?

Business Owner: Umm because I spelled something wrong?

Patty 2: Patty 1, seriously? Who cares. And you suck at SEO and give all the wrong advice. Will someone please remove this post it violates T.O.S. Fred good luck – your website needs  help and might have some penalties  assessed.

Patty 1: Are you kidding me Patty 1? Get prepared to be flamed… I am calling all my clique members over  here and your  going down son.. downtown fast!

Legitimate Helper: Hi Fred both posters are right your  website could use some love. For an example; there is hidden text in your  footer. The links on your home page are hidden from the end user and your website has two unethical redirects. If you need  help or ideas on fixing these, just ask.

Patty 1: Wait! Who are you Mr. “Legitimate Helper,” yeah seriously. This guys website is messed isn’t it. So what makes you so special? What makes you think you know what  your doing? Mr. Legitimate Helper – we don’t take kind to your kind here.

Patty 2: Yeah!  Get outta here Legitimate Helper! Patty 1, I  think you need to reference your SEO for dummies manual soon… You sound like a noob.

…and you get the idea. Legitimate questions end up turning into scenarios just like this. My opinion is this: Google Webmaster Central  does  have very knowledge people to help you with your  website problems – what it has even more of is cliques, unacknowledged people, ego heads (who think they know what they are talking about and  sound pretty convincing), and cliques who are there just to battle other cliques. It’s really that simple.

I would suggest following your  favorite blogger  or two and ask questions and get involved with comments.

Cheers to that.

SH