Google have now formally announced Google Webmaster Tools - Google Webmaster Tools, as of Friday afternoon (4th August). Vanessa Fox introduced the change on the Google Sitemaps Blog, "we've renamed 'Google Sitemaps' to 'Google Webmaster Tools' to provide tools and information through the Google Sitemaps Console."
Alongside this Google have combined a number of resources into the Google Webmaster Central - your one-stop source for information regarding crawling and indexing on Google. You'll find links to our newly named webmaster tools, this blog, the group, our webmaster help center, and more.
Google have added a new Google Group - the Google Webmaster Group. This has been restyled and had some new category classifications added to make information easier to locate. Most notably of all is Google's promise to follow the conversations and post from time to time in response. This really is a step away from the days of limited communication or direct regard for those site creators, owners and webmasters.
At the same time as the renaming, Google's Webmaster Tools has been complemented by two additional tools for this growing family. The Site Verification Section has a new tool to allow re-assessment of all site owners currently. Google had an existing policy of checking periodically that all site owners were still authorised for webmaster stats and tools, but they have now enabled a general request to re-verify all webmasters. This tool will make it easier to react to changes in site ownership and active site partners.
A longstanding issue for Google and Webmasters was the preferred domain URL format. In some situations webmasters may prefer their sites to be indexed under the www version or non-www version of the domain. Setting this association of preferred domain with the specific webmaster tool will allow webmasters to better control what Google users see in SERP listings for their site.
Finally, there are also more detailed reports to be downloaded, included an updated query stats section and a high quality and much improved crawl error interface.
Google Webmaster Tools seems to be another giant step in the right direction from the search giant of them all, and one that will improve quality overall for everyone. These tools for should be adopted by any serious Webmaster out there.
