Google offer far more than just a search engine. They have become a driving force in online innovation, developing some exceptional tools and programmes along the way. Here, we take a look at some of the most significant of these.
Google AdWords
This is Google’s Pay per Click platform. It provides site owners the opportunity to advertise their site within specific search terms on Google’s SERPs. Within AdWords you will also find the Keyword Tool, which will highlight potential phrases and the competition levels you face. Perfect for websites looking to get additional exposure.
Google Alerts
Get the latest updates in any field delivered straight to your inbox. Alerts scrapes Google News for stories that contain your requested keywords and phrases, then sends the information and links to your email account.
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Today I went to verify ownership of a site in Google Webmaster Tools and received an error message telling me that the verification had failed and the file was empty. Typically the HTML verification file, which was uploaded to the root directory of the site to verify ownership, would simply be blank.
Upon further investigation it appears that Google has updated the HTML Verification file and the HTML file now contains:
google-site-verification: googleefaXXcdXXXXXXXXX.html
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According to Internet security company Dasient, 5.8 million pages over 640,000 sites were infected with malware in the third quarter of 2009, whilst Google revealed that the number of entries on the Google Safe Browsing Malware List has doubled in the last year.
But what is Malware and what do you do if your website is infected?
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…For that matter, was PageRank ever relevant? After Google’s decision to remove the PageRank feature from its Webmaster Tools without warning, have we finally witnessed the death knell for the ever popular site strength tracker?
For some time Google have been telling the SEO and webmaster communities not to focus too heavily on PageRank; so perhaps this is their more explicit way of telling us all to forget about it. But whilst PageRank isn’t the only determining factor in how well a website has been optimised and will ultimately rank on SERPs, does it not still have some merit as an indicator, no matter how loose?
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Google have unveiled a raft of new changes to their Webmaster Tools section in recent months. This week we’ve seen two more, with the inclusion of a ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ and ‘Malware details’ features.
Both can provide significant assistance to Webmasters and site owners alike. Helping to unlock the secrets of what the Googlebot is able to see when crawling a site, whilst also ensuring that it hasn’t been infected with malicious Malware software. Essential for SEO and security.
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If you’re a Webmaster or site owner, this should be of interest to you!
Within Google Webmaster Tools, it has been possible for a while to get a list of those pages that Google has as ‘Not found’ or 404.
First and foremost, if you have pages not found, you should take steps to fix them, e.g. if a page has been renamed, redirect the old page to the new page (301 permanent redirect).
Now though, Google Webmaster Tools shows you where your 404 pages are being linked from (Diagnostics | Web crawl):
Webmaster Tools Shows Inbound Links for 404 Pages
Once you analyse the inbound links to old or broken 404 pages, you can take the appropriate steps to fix the issue. You could contact the Webmaster of the site that is linking to yours and ask them to update to give their visitors a better experience or you could 301 redirect the old page to new page if there is a suitable replacement.
Whichever route you take, you should definitely keep an eye on your Webmaster Tools account and particularly your diagnostics section. Keep your site in order and you may just get rewarded for it by gaining additional traffic.
Further Reading:
Webmaster Tools Shows Crawl Error Sources
Matt Cutts Tutorial on Using Web Crawl Diagnostics
