Friday, December 14, 2007

Google Webmaster Tools Continues to Amaze with New Features

Google Webmaster Tools has added a few new features that are worth mentioning. Under "Diagnostics" there is now a "Content analysis". Google is reporting information on Title Tags, Description Tags, and Content.

Webmaster Tools can tell the Webmaster if titles are missing, too long, too short, non informative and if they are duplicated.

It can provide the same information for the description tags. This is key because historically Google used snippets in their SERPs. Now good meta descriptions can be used. That means more control over the SERPs with an ability to "sell" a searcher on your link.

I am not sure what the content area is going to display or report on yet.

They have also added information about Sitelinks. This can be found under "Links", then "Sitelinks". At Pubcon 2007, Matt Cutts publicly announced that Sitelinks are a natural part of their algorithm. Google Webmaster tools allows for an opt out of any of the algorithmically discovered sitelinks. I find it hard to believe that any sitelink would not be valuable.

If you are not familiar with sitelinks, here is an example:

Google Analytics Updates Their Snippet Code

This is pretty interesting. Google Analytics has updated their snipper code. It is a bit longer, but nicely deals with the issue of http vs. https. There are also some new bonuses, you may read about it more at the Google Analytics Blog.