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Google Webmaster Central Tools

Table of Contents

Introduction


Google came a long way regarding the information it provides to webmasters, who rely fair indexing and ranking by search engines, because search engines are the number one destination when they start using the internet and Google is the biggest of all of them.

The Google Webmaster Central, which launched as Google Sitemaps on June 2, 2005 and then rebranded to Webmaster Central on August4, 2006, provides an ever growing toolset for webmasters to manage and troubleshoot their content in the vast Google search index.

While this page does require that you already have an active Google Webmaster Central account, it is also interesting for people who did not create an account and registered their website with this Google service, because it shows what you could get and that it is worth to create an account.

General Links to Google Webmaster Central
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Download Data for ALL your Sites


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A Google Webmaster Central account is required to access the following URLs and you also have to be logged in or the links might not work properly (because of the redurect to the Google login form).

> Access Download Data for all Sites
  • Summary data - list of all sites, how many Sitemaps you've submitted for each, and whether each of the site is verified or not.
  • Sitemap details - list of all Sitemaps for all sites, including all errors for each Sitemap.
  • Error details - Includes all pages that Googlebot had trouble crawling for all sites.
  • Statistics - Includes all downloadable stats, including query stats and page analysis, for all sites.
  • Subscriber Stats includes all downloadable stats about your feed subscribers, if your RSS feed is managed by Feedburner (now owned by Google).
Download Links
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Data for Individual Sites


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A Google Webmaster Central account is required to access the following URLs and you also have to be logged in or the links might not work properly (because of the redurect to the Google login form).

In order for me to update the links to the various site tools and downloads at Google Webmaster Central Tools is it necessary that you provide the domain name of your website below. The links on this page will then be updated with your information as you type.

Site URL (without HTTP):

Examples: www.cumbrowski.com or cumbrowski.com

Site Overview


> Access Site Overview

The dashboard for an individual site of yours that you registered and verified with Google Webmaster Central. It shows on one page important news and more importantly issues and problems that Google might has with your site or your sitemaps for your website.

Note: If you did not enter your domain name above, then the provided link will redirect you to the general dashboard of Webmaster Central instead.

Site Settings


> Configure Site Settings

  • Geographic target - country, such as United States, if your website is targeted for visitor of a specific country, otherwise leave it on "unspecified".
  • Preferred domain - no preference, www.domain.com version or domain.com version
  • Image search - include images from your site in Google Image Search (or not)
  • Crawl rate - auto or set a custom crawl rate. Custom rate: requests per second (0.003 default) and seconds between requests (333.333 default)

Site Links (no Downloads)


> Manage Site Links (no Downloads)

Sitelinks might appear next to the search result for your website on Google.com. I believe that a certain amount of traffic is required before sitelinks will appear for your site). Sitelinks are additional links to other pages on your website where Google believes that they might be useful for their vistors. This determination is automated and thus not fool-proof or highlighting what you think to important sections of your website.

Here is an example for how sitelinks might look like in Google search results at Google.com.

Example Search Result

This is an example of what a search result with sitelinks looks like. The sitelinks are displayed below.
www.example.com/ - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
Sitelinks

If Google shows Sitelinks for your web site in their search results, you can see what Google picked and which additional pages they link to at the Sitelink management page at Google Webmaster Central.

While you can not specify the Sitelinks that you would like Google to show, the URL and the anchor, you do have the option to remove and block any of the links that Google is currently using, together with a reason why you think that they should not use it (such as "link is broken", "I don't want this page emphasized", "the title is incorrect" or "other", plus a text box for any other comments that you might have).

Any link that you block will be unblocked automatically by Google after 3 months, but you can also unblock any of them yourself before, via the interface.

Site Maps


> Access Site Maps

Also see my resources page to "Site Maps and Site Feeds for Search Engines" for information about the site map protocol standard and tools that help you to create site maps following that standard for your own web sites.

Web Crawl Errors


> Access Web Crawl Data

Combined Downloads for your Site

Downloads for each individual type of error

Content Analysis Data


> Access Content Analysis Data

Statistics


Free Google Stats Download File Converter Tool
This tool is also helpful for people that can work with the CSV files from Google, but might have a slight problem with the file generated for the Query Stats for the complete site (including sub folders), where all Key Phrases for the same Site/Location and Search Type are grouped together in one cell, using "[,],:" and double quotes. If you rather have a single record for earch key phrase, this tool can help.

The tool can serve other purposes as well, because it can convert the comma-dellimited data provided by Google into any delimited format you might prefer. The tools supports various delimiters and text qualifiers, including Tab, Pipe, Tilde and more. It comes with an API, so it can be automated as well.

> See: Google Stats Converter Tool

Top Search Queries


> Access Top Search Queries

Statistics Downloads

What Google Bot sees


> Open What Google Bot sees

Statistics Downloads

Crawl Stats (no Download available)


There you can see the Googlebot activity on your web site in the last 90 days. It shows figures about:

  • the Number of pages crawled per day
  • Number of kilobytes downloaded per day
  • Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)

It also shows some rough information about the PageRank of your pages in Google (no exact figures, only a bar diagram where the size depends on the value and the amount of total pages of your site indexed). The scale is not like 1-10 as the Google Toolbar. It only has 4 groups:

  • High
  • Medium
  • Low
  • Not yet assigned

Last but not least it shows for each of the past three months the page with the highest PageRank of your web site. This is usually your sites homepage.

> Access Crawl Stats (no Download available)

Index Stats


> Access Index Stats

This tool actually uses public Google.com search command features that do not require to have a Google Webmaster Central account. The links won't work properly though, unless you provided me with your site's domain name above.

Subscriber Stats


> Access Subscriber Stats

This statistics requires that you are using the Feedburner service for your site's RSS/ATOM feeds. Feedburner provides a set of useful tools (including some nice feed analytics) and was acquired by Google on June 3, 2007.

Link Data/Reports


External Links Reports


> Get Reports for External Links

Report Downloads

Internal Links Repors


> Get Reports for Internal Links

Report Downloads

Site Tools

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Need some documentation for your IT staff that they can process the downloaded statistics and report and integrate it into your existing website management solution?

Check out my Google Webmaster Central Downloads - Documentation. It might be able to help with that.

Analyse Robots.txt


> Start Analyse Robots.txt

Robots.txt Generator Tool


> Use the Robots.txt Generator Tool

For more information about the Robots.txt search engine exclusion protocol standard, HTML meta-tags relevant to search engines and tools, check out my resources page to "Search Engine Spiders, META Tags and Robots.txt Exclusion Protocol".

Site Verification Management

In order for Google to verify that the site that you register in Webmaster Central is actually a web site that you control, a few verification steps are necessary, which are described and documented at Site Verification Management page.

> Open the Site Verification Management

Remove Unwanted, Incorrect URLs

Make sure that the pages that appear in the index right now will either return a 404 or 410 HTTP status code or are excluded from crawling by GoogleBot via the robots.txt or document META noindex tag.

Removal requests take about 3-5 business days.

> Use the Remove Unwanted, Incorrect URLs Tool

Gadgets and Widgets


Enhanced 404 Page Not Found Widget by Google for your Website


> Get the Enhanced 404 Page Not Found Widget by Google for your Website

Webmaster Tools Gadget for iGoogle Homepage


> Get the Webmaster Tools Gadget for iGoogle Homepage


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General Account Tools


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Message Center


The Message Center shows any messages specifically related to your web sites or your Webmaster Central Account. No News are usually good use in this case, because messages are typically servere issues that Google might has with one or all of your web sites.

> Open the Message Center

Request Reconsideration (Reinclusion Request)


This form should only be used, if your web site suddenly drops significantely in ranking for virtually all search terms where you ranked previously much higher (I am talking about a drop of at least 30 positions or more) or disappeared from the Google index altogether for over 1-2 weeks, because of violations of their webmaster guidelines (also called Google-Ban or Google-Penalty).

Before you use that form, make sure first, that your site was really banned or penalized and that the cause for the ban or penalty was determined and fixed.

You might want to hire a search engine optimization specialist to help you with that determination. Also see my resources page to "Search Engine Ban, Google Sandbox Effect, Poor SEO, Reinclusion Reques".

> Start Request Reconsideration (Reinclusion Request)

Report Spam in Google's Index


If you found something that is obvious spam or malicious in Google's search results and would like to let Google know about it, here is one way of doing that.

> Start Report Spam in Google's Index

Report Paid Links


I only list this page for the sake of accuracy and completness, but I added "nofollow" to it, because I usually would not link to this page. The reason for that is that I believe that having and more so using this tool is unethical and avoided.

I wrote more than once about the issue of paid links and think that a form to tell off other web masters aides some of the lowest human instincts and won't solve Google's problem that paid links DO WORK and are not always as bad as they want make people believe.

See for example this post of mine at Search Engine Journal, this one, or this one, as examples of my arguments.

> Start Report Paid Links


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Public Google Tools


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The following tools and pages do not require a Webmaster Central account and can be used/accessed anonymously.

Site Status Tool


> Use the Site Status Tool

Shows if:
  • Pages from your site are included in Google's index or not
  • Googlebot has successfully accessed your home page or not
May also show potential indexing problems


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Blogs, Forums, Documentation, Videos and Third Party Tools


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Here are a list of other useful tools and resources as well as educational content, such as video tutorials and outlets to communicate with follow webmasters and Google support staff.


For tools and services similar to Google's Webmaster Central provided by other search engines, such as Yahoo and Microsoft, check out my resources page to Search Engine Guidelines and Blogs, Tips and Information for Webmasters, Search Engine Bloggers.

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