Checking out Google’s Webmaster tools at Google Dev Day
Categories: User Experience, Web Tools, Web UsagePosted on May 31st, 2007I’ve got some other notes I’ll be publishing, but in the meantime, here’s a little interesting tool that if you’re managing a website to know about.
I’m at the Google Developer day here at the San Jose convention center and had a nice close up tour of the Web Master tools that Google provides.
Did you know that you can see who’s linked to you, and export the data? While the data is alpha organized and a bit raw, it may have data (or richer data) than what Technorati brings to you. You can also check out Google queries, and how people found your site, and which keywords they used. I found out that I show up as the fourth Jeremiah in search results. (The Google folks were impressed!) By putting this data next to your Analytics, you can get a better sense of how folks are finding you. I also discovered my blog has a ton of 404 links, likely due to my site being down from dreamhost. Overall checkup? My site’s doing well, although I should upload a sitemap using my RSS feed. Yet another way to observe the User Experience.
Did I tell you I hate the term “Webmaster”? It’s so reminiscent of the sys admin in your IT department that built your first corporate website with flashing graphics.
Update: I’m not the only one that doesn’t like the webmaster title.
5 Responses to “Checking out Google’s Webmaster tools at Google Dev Day”
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Jeremiah Owyang
Silicon Valley
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Will definitely need to give this a test.. thanks for the heads up…
Cheers,
Arjun Thomas.
Posted by Arjun Thomas on May 31st, 2007 at 10:04 pm
It’s a decent start. Export is nice, but it would be better if the links analysis could filter out repetitive linking via blogrolls whereby every page of a site links to me (but it’s really just a common include).
Also, when I logged in it said : Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Nov 23, 2006. This is clearly wrong. I recently added a meta description to my home page and google picked it up a week ago.
I liked the instant vote on tool usefulness. Very nice. Why this isn’t merged into google analytics I don’t know.
Posted by brian on May 31st, 2007 at 10:36 pm
[...] Jeremiah on Webmaster as a title: Did I tell you I hate the term “Webmaster”? It’s so reminiscent of the sys admin in your IT department that built your first corporate website with flashing graphics. [...]
Posted by A Second Opinion on Webmaster as a Title | C. David Gammel, High Context Consulting: Unleashing the strategic potential of the Web. on June 1st, 2007 at 3:20 am
[...] I got a tour of the Google Webmaster tools, I found the ‘incoming links’ data very interesting, the Google employee who showed me hadn’t even heard of Technorati, which is also interesting on many regards. [...]
Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » What every Web Strategist should know after going to Google Developer Day on June 1st, 2007 at 6:28 am
[...] I’m getting more and more interested in the Google “Webmaster” (did I tell you I hate that term) features that they demo’d to me at Google Developer Day. [...]
Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » What’s your Page Rank? on June 2nd, 2007 at 9:15 am