Personally, I’m a pretty big advocate of using Google Webmaster Tools, Live.com’s Webmaster Center and Yahoo Site Explorer to upload XML Sitemaps and track the ways the various search engines are indexing my sites.
Google Webmaster Tools also lets us control the Sitelinks which are being served in Google results, alerts us to error pages or pages not being properly indexed by Google, and a glimpse into how Google picks up the incoming links to our sites.
A question was just posed to me .. should SEO’s really be using these services or are there sufficient third party tools on the market to get the same job done. And doesn’t listing your XML sitemap in your Robots.txt file tell the engines where your XML sitemap is located?
So why use Google Webmaster Tools?
And if you own multiple sites, shouldn’t you be setting up different Google user accounts?
Does Google Webmaster Tools let Google see too much into your own practices and some of the work you may be doing for other sites? Does it let them profile SEO’s?
OR is Google Webmaster Tools the best thing since sliced bread.
What are your thoughts on the question? Please feel free to share them below.
I’m also a big fan of Google webmaster tools. My traffic has always gone up after submitting the sitemap, checking any errors, etc.
>>> So why use Google Webmaster Tools?
My favorite feature – “Web crawl errors” they spot (though there many other tools that can do this but I trust Google more – yeah, sounds scary :))
I also love “top search queries”. I seldom submit sitemaps there or use any other features. All in all, my SEO process is not based on it…
As for the FUD :) Google has so much more ways to “see too much into our practices” – that the less you think about that, the better. Similarly, they are great at identifying one has multiple sites and telling if that’s bad. So I wouldn’t think much about that. Setting up multiple accounts for everything is either impossible or makes no sense.
Conclusion: if Google lets you see more info – go ahead and learn it but also think for yourself. I for one use the tools out of curiosity most of the time…
I’ve recently written a couple of articles on Google Webmaster Tools and the benefits to SEO in general.
Personally, I’d be at a loss without it.
It’s a fantastic set of tools, and the recent update now allows you to see top search queries by type and by country, offering up a great insight into Sitelinks, amongst things.
Highly recommended…
Thank you, Wayne…
Your thoughts are highly appreciated. I do agree that they are improving day by day…
I use them infrequently – they are as useful as the next free tool, like Ann, I normally only check them really for errors or ‘surprises’.
I use GWT often, but don’t rely on it for everyday workings.
I started using it when it first came out a few years ago. Since then i’ve seen the additional reports and funtionality increase. This giving us more inteligence on issues affecting the sites we work with.
Good question. While it can be a disturbing thought how much information Google has access too, I really like their tools. You can use other tools, but it’s just so easy to use Google. And since I don’t do black hat, I don’t think it could harm me if they made a profile of me.
ps. @Hobo, what do you mean by “the next free tool like Ann”? I know she offers some free SEO, but still … it’s not all free
Thanks for the overwhleming response to this question.
In terms of link checking tools, I’ve found that LinkSleuth is a free tool which accurately identifies internal and external linking erros within sites.
I find that backlinks checkers which run off of the Yahoo API work wonders in checking and filtering backlinks, although Google Webmaster Tools do give some insignt on how Google identifies those links, and on what frequency.
Although, I do not believe that the Google Webmaster Tools team is being totally transparent in this regard.
One thing that bugs me is the amount of rumors in the SEO world surrounding Google tools.
“Don’t use Google Analytics because they’ll see where you’re getting your traffic from.”
Well, if you use Google AdSense on your site, Google can sniff around to see where your traffic is coming from there as well.
“Don’t use NoFollow’s in your internal site structure because then Google knows that you are an SEO.”
Well, there may be a point there.
“Don’t use Webmaster Tools because then Google knows everything you’re doing.”
In terms of linking, if Google wants to identify your backlinks, they can just do so using their index. The Google backlink command is broken / limited for users (which is why Yahoo is so well used for checking backlinks)… but not for Google.
If you’re up to something else which you’re afraid Google may find out about, then well, you may not want to validate your site with them.
But then on the other hand, if you don’t validate your site, then wouldn;t you then be sending them a message?
Of course, this is a chicken & egg scenario, and pretty paranoid, but as a rule of thumb, for most organicly SEO’d sites, there is no problem with validating with the big three search engines.
I mean, SEO is not a bad thing. If it were, the Google, MSN and Yahoo engineers would not be opening up their services to actually help SEO’s.
Or would they? :)
Oh, one thing I have learned which is quite valuable via Google Webmaster Tools is that when using post slugs in WordPress URL’s : don’t use a ‘ or ; or ” in your title because Google can’t process the URL.
I love GWMC. It gives much more link info for G than any other 3rd party tool I know.
Also , theres a great tool by Johnmu that takes the weird search query and click data csv that GWMC gives and turns it into a neat excel file that you can filter by location, types of searches, etc.
http://johnmu.com/webmaster-tools-script-1/
I recommend different GWT accounts for each site, or at least for each set of sites a client has. A year ago, I had my AdWords accounts all suspended because the owner of one site disputed $35 worth of credit card charges for AdWords. Only thing in common was they were under the same GWT account.
I was subcontracting for a friend, spending about 10 hours a month doing minor updates for her clients’ sites, and added the dozen sites to my GWT account that had two other independent sites. I removed the sites from my GWT account (and my life) and have not had any other issues with my AdWords accounts.
Of the three groups of sites, the “friend’s” sites were on one or two servers and mostly registered in her name, but the other two sites were totally independent of each other, and each created long before I was involved with either site. I had access to Google Analytics for all of the sites, but they were not all in the same profile, and some were view-only. Google said they don’t disclose how they determined the sites were connected, but GWT was the easiest and most comprehensive way of finding all of those sites.
>>> If it were, the Google, MSN and Yahoo engineers would not be opening up their services to actually help SEO’s.
Really, would they? I doubt that :)
I love the Web Crwal Errors and the Top Search Query. It could be phrases you are optimizing for but are more than likely items you never think of. This is great information into how people are searching. Above all, I could able to mange multiple websites with Google webmaster tool
We are all in the business of researching and understanding as much about websites and the Internet as possible.
That is what makes SEO what it is. We are always on the lookout for more and more tools to show us more and more information.
Its expected that Google or any of the search engines are doing the same.
I am really not bothered if its going to help me and my clients efforts by Google having more information.
As far as the Web Master tools are concerned, well they are tools and they are tools made by the people that we are trying to optimise around.
Knowing if our sites are being crawled by Google well….. priceless.
Wishing everyone an exseollent day.
I use Google Webmaster Tools everyday!
I have wondered if they track how often I login. I guess it’s obvious they track it, but do they do anything with that information? Does logging in make you look like you’re aggressively trying to SEO your site. If you look like you’re too eager, will they punish you at some point? I only have two sites, so it’s pretty obvious in my case. I doubt that they use that information, but I’ve definitely wondered about it.
I sign clients up individually for Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics so we both are able to view reports and stats. I particularly like the links section of Google Webmaster tools. I download the links, save off in excel and am able to track new links indexed from link building for clients.
Honestly, I haven’t tried using this tool…but after reading this one…I’m looking forward to using it myself and experience how it differs from other tools.
You have to figure that they have the info off your server logs anyway, whether you sign up for the service or not. I have never heard of a case where server logs were considered private, and I would think that along with indexing the site it’s self, the related server logs are also looked at. But this is just a guess on my part…
However, I do know that I have had pages on my server indexed when no link to them existed. So googlebot is poking around in places that it doesn’t get to by following links.
The tools are okay, I don’t think it matters one way or another rank-wise just to purely use them. It just makes your log info look nice, and hopefully from there you can make informed decisions that will help ranking, or traffic, or whatever your cause.
The most frustrating thing about Google Webmaster Tools is how long it takes to update. I usually have to wait 2-3weeks before i see any changes despite being crawled every few days. It makes it very difficult to track how changes to the site or optimization effects traffic.
For example, search results and links take a very long time. Do those praising how great Webmaster Tools are have a similar experience?
I think they would use it to their advantage if you have more multiple sites in one account.
Hello, I have a site with about 1000 unique users daily. There is now almost 6 months till the domain registration, the Page rank is still 0. I guess it’s in the sandbox
I have 4-5 years of writing in forums and I have about 5000 posts in various forums with an average Page rank of 3.
I can put the address of the site with the appropriate anchor in my signature in these forums. Could that do any help at all? I mean regarding the optimization? However, these would be extra links, pointing to the site, but they come from sites with topics that had nothing to do with my site subject.
The “Drop by drop – pool” sentence could apply here?
So, my question is: What’s better? Less links, but from suitable sites or many links INDISCRIMINATELY?
Thanks in advance.:))
Best regards,
Hi,
I have an established health information site with 3000 pages and a PR that fluctuates between 4 and 5.
Over the past month the total backlinks shown in Webmaster Tools has dropped from 6500 to 5000, while links to the homepage have been cut in half from 3000 to 1500. Traffic during this time has continued to climb steadily…
Surely there isn’t a campaign against my site that has resulted in half of the backlinks to my site being removed over a month! Does anybody know why there could be such a significant drop in the backlinks according to Webmaster Tools?
Thanks.