Google Webmaster Center Adds Content Analysis and Sitemap Details

Google has added some great new features to their Webmaster Center. If you don’t use Google’s Webmaster Center and you care about your search engine placement, then you are missing the boat. For a detailed look at Google’s Webmaster Center read my post “Google Webmaster Center Updates ” from September 07.
Google actually is now pointing out things about your site that it doesn’t like. You can probably assume that these would be the same things that Yahoo and ASK don’t like about your site as well. I think it is mighty nice of Google to take the time to actually help us improve our rankings rather then taking away marketing tools like text ads!

Google Webmaster Center Content Analysis Tool

The new tool can be found in the Diagnostics part of the Webmaster Center. The graphic below will show you the main parts of their Webmaster Center:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Content analysis shows you three things that you need to know about your site:

1. Meta Title – how is your title tag? Is it too long, too short, make sense? These questions and many more are answered for you by Google.
2. Non-Index-able Content – this is pretty cool as it will point out to you the stuff on your site that Google can’t spider. Things like flash or script-laden pages, also images that have no “alt” tags. This is important now that everyone is using video. Google also has a new Video Sitemap that you can use to properly index your video content.
3. Meta Tag Issues – this tool focuses on the meta description which is very important for you to be able to control the description that appears for your pages within Google’s SERP’s.

The graphic below shows an example of what the Title tag and Meta Descriptions look like:

By using these tools you won’t automatically jump to the top of the ranks, but they will help you get your site tuned up and as good as it can be in the eyes of Googlebot. The graphic below gives you a look at the non-index-able content section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I highly recommend to all webmasters that they take advantage of these and all the powerful tools that Google is giving you.

Google Webmaster Center Sitemap Details

I surely hope that all of you avail yourselves of XML sitemaps. XML is probably the most significant programming language to a webmaster that wants search engine placement. Both XML sitemaps and XML-RPC are a gateway to higher rankings, especially within Google. Read my post Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Marketing for more info on these tools.

Google’s Webmaster Center was initially built for site owners and optimizers to submit XML Sitemaps. It is great that they are continuing to add more and more tools to help us out, and the new Sitemap Details is a nice add-on. Below is a snap-shot of the Sitemap Details section:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While it is true that the URL’s submitted in your Sitemap don’t necessarily reflect all the URL’s that are in Google’s index, it is better than doing a site: search.

Google also added a couple of new languages for those of you that don’t like English. I got the graphics from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.