Guide to the Google Webmaster’s Toolset
Posted By Melanie Prough on May 5, 2009
The Google Webmasters Tools are a wonderful vantage to Google’s graces. They allow easy access to crawl stats and more. Your sitemap and several decisions are submitted here. You can survive without the tools, but they are highly recommended.
You must have a Google / Gmail account to use these tools. When you first arrive at Google Webmaster Tools, you will be asked for your site. Enter your entire URL including your trailing slash in the field, take care to use or not use the www (per your chosen protocol). Now the “Dashboard” will be displaying, this is where all your sites will be once added.
In the dashboard there is a “verify” link in line with the site you just added. Upon clicking if you will find a standard site verification comprised of a Meta tag or empty html file. Verify your site, and leave the Meta or empty file present forever as Google sometimes checks back.
Now you are ready to add your sitemap. In the Dashboard view, in line with the new site under the sitemap heading is a “add” link. You choose the type general or mobile . Then you are taken to a screen to render the location of your sitemap. Once submitted it can take 1 to 72 hours to be approved. I recommend you get on board with Auto Discovery of your Sitemap via your robots.txt.
If you are a new user to the Google Webmasters Toolset, many function will take a few week to work. Some functions won’t work until your site hits certain plateaus of indexing.
Once your site is added, verified, and your sitemap is approved use the Site Status Link to enter the toolset. Enter your URL and it will give you a quick rundown of problems, last crawl, and if your indexed. I like using this link to enter, if there are any problems I have a general idea before I get inside. Once inside there is a great deal of information, this way I have a better sense of direction on my visit.
The first page once inside is your summary page. This contains your indexing and crawl information including any errors, like missing pages. Spend some time here, investigate every error fully.
Down the left side are several more menu choices in “Diagnostic”.
- Web Crawl (Search crawl errors by range)
- robots.txt analysis (Check your robots.txt for syntax errors)
- Manage Site Verification
- Crawl Rate (control how often Google crawls, not recommended)
- Preferred Domain (set to either www/non www, its important to avoid duplicate content)
- Enhanced Image Search (participate in image search or not)
- URL Removals (remove indexed URLS that are not live, or blocked via robots commands/txt)
The next tab is Statistics. Lets run down though those menu choices on the left bar.
- Crawl Stats (Pagerank and highest Pageranked page)
- Query Stats (top keyword searches and your position over last 7 days, top search clicks last 7 days, ability to search this info by country and web, can download the chart in CSV)
- Page Analysis (Anchor text in external links, word density in content and links, text/html distribution, Encoding/distribution. Also download CSV)
- Index Stats (indexed pages, backlinks, cache, site info, and similar pages)
The next tab is the ALMIGHTY LINKS. This is a flaky tool, it does not always work. If its not working try the link analysis here. Lets explore the options:
- External Links: This has a table that provides a list of pages on your site that have links coming in to them from other sites. Broken down by your site’s page and can be downloaded CSV also.
- Internal Links: Has a table with a list of pages on your site that have links pointing to them from other internal pages. Broken down by your site’s page and can be downloaded.
Lastly the Sitemaps tap is just to check up on the status of you sitemap or upload a new one.
This is quick get started guide, I hope it helps to get you going with the toolset. I suggest even seasoned webmasters use them, if for no other reasons than to be able to submit your map, see your crawls and errors, and remove pages from the index. That’s powerful stuff!
Peace and SEO
Melanie Prough
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Webmaster tools are great – we use them all the time. Definitely a tool worth knowing about and using if you want good SEO.
Tools are helpful… But never let a single tool be the answer for anything