Why I Love Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is the dog's mutt's place to spend some time productively learning about how your site interacts with Google.

I've been using it for a while now and it's getting better all the time.

So why should all webmaster's use it?

Well it's a very quick, easy way to see how often GoogleBot's crawling, how many pages they take and where they're having problems.

I've used it on a client's site recently to spot problems when we transfered over to a dynamically created site. Moving from perl to php caused some problems in relation to the case of directories and filenames. Using Google Webmaster Tools we quickly spotted the areas of concern and with a conference call this morning we fixed them.

You can also choose your prefered domain in Google. Would you want your site to be crawled and displayed as www.domain.com or domain.com - it makes a difference!

You can also very quickly see what your site is ranking for and what people actually click on - allowing to rethink your <> and page content so what is displayed encourages people to click.

But the bit I love the most is this new feature which Matt Cutts has blogged about: A proper backlinks tool.

Previously doing link:www.domain.com has pulled out loads of rubbish and certainly wasn't a filtered list. Now they've got rid of all the duplication and given you a distinct list of all the pages (they know about) on the net and which pages they link to on your site! Simply awesome!

But it's best to read the official blog on the matter to find out more - Using Webmaster Tools to Find your backlinks.

But what do we really want next?

I'd recommend some sort of similarity tool. I know there may be legal implications of Google saying publicaly "we reckon this site has ripped you off". But we need some way of spotting sites that are scraping or stealling content before it becomes an issue with a site in particular.

Word From Venessa Fox about the Google Webmaster Tools, Sitemaps, Page Rank, the new link data (her comment was before the launch) etc - it's well worth watching!

The interesting fact is I know a fair bit about body language and it was so interesting watching her talk about the link data. Whilst she was saying that she knows people are wanting it etc, she was rubbing her hands away from her. This is a clear indication of her washing her hands of what she's saying. When's she's flapping her hands around a lot, she believes what she says. A good SEO should be a good body language reader too!


If you can't view iframes, click here to watch it.

But what would you want?