Category Archives: Google Webmaster Tools

GWT Crawl Errors Now Organized for Better Error Recognition

Doing Onsite SEO audits is a regular part of every optimization campaign. We use a variety of tools such as those offered at Google Webmaster Tools which proves to be helpful. However, in all honesty, if you have been a regular user of GWT you might have noticed that some of its data are presented in a not so orderly fashion. Most of the time you have to do a lot of things in order to see what the real issue is which consumes a relatively huge amount of our time.

Google Webmasters Tool Safe Access Sharing

At long last, the mammoth search engine has granted a popular request of most site owners with Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) accounts. That is, to share access to people who are considered to be part of the project without giving over access details (e.g. username and password). Remarkably, this update has given each member of the team the privilege to perform their role as “owner”, “full user” or “restricted”; depending on the level of access they are granted.

A Reminder to Webmasters: Check your Robots.txt File’s Health

Googler John Mueller posted on his Google+ profile a reminder to webmasters. He said, “…things to keep in mind when working on a big website: If you have a giant robots.txt file, remember that Googlebot will only read the first 500kb”. He also added, “If your robots.txt is longer, it can result in a line being truncated in an unwanted way.”

Site Health: Latest Addition to Google Webmaster Tools

For those of you who manage several websites, you will definitely like this newest addition to the Google Webmaster Tools’ home page — Site Health. Whenever there are health issues found on the website, a red warning icon will appear right next to the site’s thumbnail image (as seen above). If you manage about a hundred online resources, this will give you a hint as to which one currently needs your attention; saving you time…

Subdomains Now Treated as Internal Links by Google Webmaster Tools

A recent announcement from the Google Webmaster Blog states that they have changed the way they classify links within Google Webmaster Tools. Previously, a subdomain would be considered as a separate site. Therefore, any link coming from such a source would be reported as an external link. However, with this new update, all links coming from both the root domain (with or without ‘www’) and subdomains will be considered as internal.

Fetch as Googlebot Tool: A new and faster way to submit URLs

On a previous post we have created, we have introduced the Fetch as Googlebot Tool. This feature helps diagnose issues on a certain page and it is even better now that the option to submit new and updated URLs to Google has been added. After you have successfully fetched a URL using this tool, you will see the “Submit to index” feature. Submitting a URL this way ensures that your page will be potentially crawled by Googlebots within the next 24 hours…

In March of this year, we published a blog about the Parameter Handling feature of Google Webmaster Tools. In the simplest sense, this addition would solve the dilemma created by different URL structures that all point to the same page. It functions by ignoring pre-set parameters that tend to create duplicate issues. Despite certain drawbacks such as this option being exclusive only to Google, the said tool was found to be a more welcome alternative for determining the proper canonicalisation of a certain page. For site owners who have been practising Google-approved SEO methods, this has become a useful addition to their arsenal…

I recently came across an article on the Google Webmaster Central Blog. It talked about the importance of validation in evaluating the quality of a site. From the Google Webmaster Team’s perspective, having a validation mechanism for both CSS and HTML is highly essential since it can be means of spotting potential issues. According to Googler Jens O. Meiert: “the Webmaster Team considers validation a baseline quality attribute. It doesn’t guarantee accessibility, performance, or maintainability, but it reduces the number of possible issues that could arise and in many cases indicates appropriate use of technology.”…

In the past, we have written about features that have been combined with Google Analytics like Page Speed . For some time now, a lot of webmasters have been clamouring for a tool that will bring together the best elements of Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Now this premier search engine has come up with a way to integrate both in a single report…

Late last year, we posted a blog introducing the Google Instant Previews feature. Defined by its creators as a tool that “helps people find information faster by showing a visual preview of each result”, it has made finding the right information a lot more convenient. Through the visual representation of the homepage, rendered on the right side of the Search Engine Page Results (SERPS), a user need not open the actual page to know whether or not it is the one he needs…