Attention webmasters: Google Sitemaps is changing its name, and something else.

Initially, the Google Sitemaps program was just a tool to help this search engine giant index all the pages on your website. By registering with it through a Google Sitemaps account and submitting an XML sitemap, you could at least guarantee that the spider would see all the steps you’ve taken for search engine optimization.

But now there’s more to Google services than keeping track of your pages, and the new name reflects that. Now called “Google Webmaster Tools”, it has multiple features to help you handle all aspects of website administration.

The old features are still there. Sitemap submissions still follow the steps above, and the sitemap protocol (thank goodness) remains the same. You can still check the status of your submission and review any error reports from the website. However, the blog has been redesigned and new programs have been added, all to help you improve your website’s visibility on Google.

It’s a great move, especially since studies have verified that Google is the favorite of Internet users. At least 80% of the entire web population uses it, and the numbers are increasing. It has become synonymous with finding information on the web, and has even been adopted into language: if you want data, you “Google” it.

But the competition is stiff, and users don’t have the patience to sift through tens of thousands of search results. It needs to be in the top 15 sites, so search engine visibility and ranking are crucial. Google Webmaster Tools help make that career a little easier.

For example, you have changed your web team and someone has been given the go-ahead. That means that person should no longer be able to access the site and make changes. The old Google would have allowed you to delete his verification file, but now you don’t have to wait for regular updates (crucial if that person wasn’t too happy with the company’s restructuring and can use his account to take revenge). You can now click “manage site verification”, delete it yourself, and then click “Re-verify all site owners”.

Essentially, Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/) helps you better control the management of your website. You are no longer just passively submitting your site, you can monitor and edit it accordingly.

Blogging on Webmaster Central

The blog has been redesigned to focus primarily on webmaster topics: webmaster tools, the Sitemaps protocol, and all things related to the science of crawling and indexing sites.

One of the most welcome changes is its easy to use filing system. Blog posts are grouped into categories, making it easy to find the information you’re looking for (it’s a search engine company, after all). There are also links to other Google webmaster tools for easy navigation.

Find help in Google Groups

Google Webmaster Support Groups are an online forum where you can raise your technical concerns and be heard. Some of the FAQs already have existing threads, with suggestions from experts, Google employees, and other members (about 7,500 users already). You can also post your questions and follow links to other sources of information.

Manage your site

But the essence of the changes lies in the site administration tools. Let’s check on your site, http://www.abc123.com. Visit “My Sites” and you will see your registered sites in a handy graph form and see if they have been verified or not. You can also find other tools, such as reporting spam or opt-out requests. .

You can also run diagnostics on the indexing summary page, which lists all the obstacles that Google’s spider encountered when traversing your site. This includes HTTP errors, robot txt restrictions, URLs that could not be reached, or timed out. You can then check the specific pages where the errors occurred (for example, you will see that a link was disabled). Google also logs the last time you tried to access that page, in case you’ve already made corrections since then.

Another welcome feature is being able to submit your preferred domain name (should I remove the “www” or not?). This is a huge boost in link canonicalization and helps with issues with duplicate content, which could affect sites that don’t use the “301 redirect” feature.

Query stats reveal how you rank and what types of queries get you to the top (a tool for search engine optimization strategies!) There’s the added convenience of being able to check your performance across different geographic locations. That’s great if your website is targeting particular demographics. Google also provides crawling statistics so you know which of your pages receives the most visits and has the highest individual rankings.

Another cool feature is page analytics. It allows you to compare your own anchor text and how other websites commonly describe it – peer reviews, so to speak. In terms of marketing strategy, understanding where your appeal lies and how the web world views the importance of your content can help you figure out which pages to create. Who knows, there may be link opportunities here, and we all know the importance of links in Google search engine ranking.

The index statistics allow you to link the different searches, which can be useful for those who don’t know how to use these functions (although some believe that precisely because this function is aimed at newbies, it would have been more useful for users). -friendly if a popup box could briefly explain what each is about). However, search engine optimization experts may not find anything new here.

Overall, Webmaster Tools is very useful, powerful and designed for both professional webmasters and the man in the street who runs a small business from home and wants to check if his website is working well or not. While the new name is rather complicated, much to the old adage that business names should be short and sweet, changing it does justice to Google Sitemap’s attempts to be more than an indexing tool.