Google posted a very generic how we help webmasters blog post the other day during Google I/O. One thing Danny Sullivan pointed out on Twitter that the forums has a way for people to reply privately without others seeing it.

I am not sure if this is new, he doesn’t say if it is new, but there is a button there that says “reply to post author privately.” Here is a screen shot of the button:

I personally don’t remember seeing this button, I do spend a lot of time in the Google forums, but I don’t often post for help.

Google wrote:

I know a lot of people who do not like to post issues in a public forum, so I guess this solves a bit of that?

Update: I confirmed this is not a new feature.

Forum discussion at Twitter.