Google has been slowly building on its Sitemaps application since its release quite a few months ago. In fact, just recently they added a new section showing you all the links pointing to your site.
But is that all Google Webmaster Central is good for? Sitemaps and links? In this article we review this Google product to determine if it is really a useful tool or time waster.
What is Google Webmaster Central?
Before I get into the “whys” of GWC let me explain what it is.
Originally, GWC started out as Google Sitemaps. This was a way to create a list of pages and save them in an XML file which you could then tell Google about so that it could more efficiently find all your sites pages. And over time, Google continued to add features to the sitemaps area which made it eventually become more useful.
Not only that but recently both MSN and Yahoo! also accepted what is now called the sitemap protocol. That means when you create an XML sitemap (the default format for the Google sitemap) it will be accepted by both Yahoo! and MSN as well.
What can Google Webmaster Central be used for?
One of the best uses for GWC is if you are a novice website owner who wants to know why their site is doing something in Google. Whether it is finding out why your site is not being indexed, or perhaps why your rankings drop, or even how Google treats certain areas of your site.
For this you can choose to go to the Google Group or read the Webmaster blog, or simply review the Google Webmaster Help Center.
It also has a site status wizard where you enter a URL and it checks to see if you have pages indexed and when Googlebot last visited. Another section is the”Add Your Content To Google” section. Neither one of these sections seem to add value however.
Enough Chatter – Get to the Good Stuff
Ok, I have touched on the useful and not-so-useful parts of GWC, now its time to get into the really good stuff. That is Webmaster Tools (Including Sitemaps). This, to me, is the only reason to use GWC.
It is here where you submit your sitemap.xml file. Once you have verified that you are the site owner you can gain access to a whole host of useful information.
The Diagnostic tab is really a summary – it tells you when Googlebot last crawled and other things like errors, pages not reachable and so on. From here you can get access to a variety of other useful information such as query stats (what terms where used when your site was found, or when it was listed but not clicked on), crawl rate (here you can control Googlebot’s crawl speed) and preferred domain.
Preferred Domain is one of the most useful, if overlooked, parts of GWC. Being able to specify to Google that you want all pages on your site associated with www.site.com (or just site.com).
What’s new with GWC
The real reason for my writing this article is to bring attention to the newest features of the program. Thanks to a recent addition, you can check all your inbound links (at least all those Google has found). Not only that but you can see where those links point to.
Conclusion
As you may see, while some aspects of Google Webmaster Central may not be useful to all users (depending on their level of experience) there are most definitely aspects that most users will find appealing and will use on a regular basis.
So it GWC a useful set of applications? On the whole I would say yes. While experienced online marketers may not need groups or FAQs they will find the webmaster tools (sitemaps) most helpful.
