Google Refreshes Webmaster Tools

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 14 May 2009

Mountain View-based search engine giant Google has recently announced that a “much needed” redesign of its Webmaster Tools was in order, following the feedback the company received from users via forums, blogs, user studies, conferences and so on. According to the Webmaster Central team this is only the beginning in what is a “brand new Webmaster Tools design” and you should stay tuned for more updates.

But until that happens, let us first take a look at what the new Webmaster Tools design has to offer:

One-stop Dashboard
The dashboard has been redesigned and it now puts the data you frequently access in one easy to access location. That data includes Links to your site, Top search queries, Sitemaps, and Crawl errors.

More top search queries
There are now up to 100 queries you can track. The quality of the data you are provided with has increased as well.

Sitemap tracking for multiple users
You can now track and monitor Sitemaps submitted by other users via robots.txt, not just the Sitemaps you submitted yourself.

Message subscription

If you subscribe to Message Center notifications via e-mail you can make sure you always be up-to-date and you will never miss a notification.

Improved menu and navigation
The features that Webmaster Tools provide have been reorganized and grouped in a more logical manner.

Smarter help

Links to relevant Help Center articles are displayed on every page. On top of this, the Help Center is now easier to use.

Sites must be verified to access detailed functionality

Before you can access any of the features Webmaster Tools has to provide, you must first verify your site.

Removal of the enhanced Image Search option
The redesigned Webmaster Tools no longer features the enhanced Image Search option.

“The new user interface is available [here]. The old user interface will continue to be available for a couple of weeks to give you guys time to adjust and provide feedback. We did our best to get the product localized; however, you may notice a few missing translations in some areas of the user interface. We apologize for the inconvenience and when we switch everyone over in a couple of weeks, we'll fully support 40 languages. The one exception will be our Help Center, which will be available in 21 languages going forward,” added Product Manager, Sagar Kamdar.


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