Google is introducing its Product Experts Program!

Over 12 years ago, we started answering webmaster questions and listening to feedback on our webmaster forums (although at the time, it was a Google Group for questions about sitemaps – original announcement). From a small mailing list, these forums have evolved to cover 15 languages and over 50,000 threads per year. These days, we learn a lot from some of the cases surfaced on this platform, and constantly use it to gather feedback to pass on to our teams.

Google’s Top Contributors () and Rising Stars () are some of our most active and helpful members on these forums. With over 100 members globally just for the Webmaster Forums (1000 members if you count all product forums), this community of experts helps thousands of people every year by sharing their knowledge and helping others get the most out of Google products.

Some of the Webmaster forum participants

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re rebranding and relaunching the Top Contributor program as Google’s Product Experts program! Same community of experts, shiny new brand.

Over the following days, we’ll be updating our badges in the forums so you can recognize who our most passionate and dedicated Product Experts are:

   Silver Product Expert: Newer members who are developing their product knowledge

   Gold Product Expert: Trusted members who are knowledgeable and active contributors

   Platinum Product Expert: Seasoned members who contribute beyond providing help through mentoring, creating content, and more

   Product Expert Alumni: Past members who are no longer active, but were previously recognized for their helpfulness

More information about the new badges and names.

Those Product Experts are users who are passionate about Google products and enjoy helping other users. They also help us by giving feedback on the tools we all use, like the Search Console, by surfacing questions they think Google should answer better, etc… Obtaining feedback from our users is one of Google’s core values, and Product Experts often have a great understanding of what affects a lot of our users. For example, here is a blog post detailing how Product Expert feedback about the Search Console was used to build the new version of the tool.

Visit the new Product Experts program website to get information on how to become a Product Expert yourself, and come and join us on our Webmaster forums, we’d love to hear from you!

Written by Vincent Courson, Search Outreach team