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Google Sitemaps Renamed - Google Webmaster Central

Google’s Webmaster Central

Google Sitemaps was created by Google for webmasters to help them get pages indexed, such as dynamic pages.  This is a way for Google to find your pages and for webmasters to directly tell Google about the pages on a site.  Google wants to know about your site comprehensively, when the URL changed last, etc.  Webmaster Central gives you information about crawling your site or any errors it might find with your site.  This is the concept behind Google Sitemaps.    

Today at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California the Google team announced the new name of the Google Sitemaps console.  It is now called Google Webmaster Central.

The look has changed, the name has changed and the toolbox is different.  It has been drastically improved in terms of usability and functionality.  To create a free Google Webmaster Central account, visit http://www.Google.com/webmasters/

If you do not know how to create the Sitemap file, visit this page for instructions:  http://www.Google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34654  Sitemaps can be XHTML mobile profiles, WML (WAP 1.2) or cHTML – the most popular is XHTML. 

When creating your sitemaps file, you will be asked to specify the frequency at which the files on your website are changed. It is important to be accurate. If, for example, you specify that a page is changed daily and it does not seem to match up with what you reported to Google, you might be penalized.  This is not the only factor, however, at which your website is scored. This field is an optional attribute and if you don’t have that information you can leave it out and the Googlebot will do the best that it can.  It is best to be as accurate as possible with this field (and anything you report to Google, for that matter).

To get started, the first thing you will need to do is verify your website.  There are two ways to verify your site – you can add a meta tag or create a html file and upload it to your website.  The file that you upload to your website can be blank but it must be named exactly as Google specified during the verification process.

Verifying your site can provide control over your website, for example, if you have multiple webmasters.  You can use sitemaps to allow different users to have access to your Google stats. Later, if that employee leaves you simply remove their verification file from the site so that the webmaster will no longer have access to your stats.  Site verification is a security feature for you – you can see what files exist in the verification tab and remove them or add more as your company changes.

Also, Webmaster Central can be a place to report spam in the index.  Click on tools then tell the Google sitemaps team.  This form carries more weight than other ways of notifying Google of spam because in order to use it you need to be verified.

Once you have verified your website, you can add a sitemap. You can add a plain text or xml file sitemap. Add a mobile sitemap if you want to promote your site on the mobile web. Mobile sitemaps are used for sites that  are written in a special protocol for mobile viewers.

After you have submitted your sitemap file, Webmaster Central will tell you if your sitemap generates any errors.

The Webmaster Central tool can provide a variety of useful troubleshooting information for webmasters.

Troubleshooting your website with Google Webmaster Central

• Webmaster Central will tell you how to make a robots.txt file for your website and how it is interpreted by Google.  The robots.txt link will show you if your robots.txt file is preventing Google from crawling your pages or directories. When you exclude a file or folder using your robots.txt file, it will take an unspecified amount of time to be removed from the index. All of the URLs to be crawled or removed go into the Google pipeline and we can't say for sure how long these changes take to be updated in the index.
• Crawl errors are reported in Webmaster Central. If Google can’t access your site or your home page, Google will tell you on the home page of “webmaster central”. Links are provided for each for the crawl errors for the last couple of weeks. You can download these tables and import it into a spreadsheet (to sort for further analysis). 
• Choose the type of the search and the location, for example, to show statistics of your site for Google search in other countries.
• Your page rank information is provided.
• Page analysis is provided.
• You can filter by date by clicking on the “web crawl” tab.

With Webmaster Central, you can manage your websites from within one central location. 

Management of your website with Webmaster Central

• You can specify the preferred domain feature – this tool allows you to choose if you want your site to be indexed with the www or without the www.  This prevents duplicate content penalties due to “cononical” problems.  You can use Webmaster Central to re-write your links so that all are either with or without www.  This is useful for webmasters that do not know how to setup a 301 redirect.
• Sitemaps will tell you if you have broken links on your site.
• Webmaster Central will tell you if you have a spam penalty such as hidden text.
• If your site has been removed from the Google index for spam penalties, after correcting those problems you can do a re-inclusion request directly from within the Webmaster Central.  The re-inclusion requests are more credible if generated from within Webmaster Central if your site is verified.
• Self-serve, basic system check can be conducted from within Webmaster Central.
• To report spam in the index, click on "tools" then tell the Google sitemaps team. This form carries more weight because in order to use it you need to be verified
• You can use the Webmaster Central to test your site against Googlebot crawler.
• If your webmaster has taken over the control of your website and you had a sitemaps files created in the past the previous webmaster, the old webmaster will most likely not be able to give you the password to their Webmaster Central account because they may have several sites in their list.  But if you create a new Webmaster Central account, verify your site and add a sitemaps file, you will begin to gain the benefits right away of utilizing the toolbox.
• You can use sitemaps to allow different users to have access to your Google stats, then later if that employee leaves you simply remove their verification file from the site so that the webmaster will no longer have access to your stats.

Webmaster Central is great for Managing Large Websites or Multiple Websites

• Sitemaps is scalable so you can launch large sites, but it is best to divide your URLs into different sitemap files and submit each sitemaps xml file in a tiered fashion.
• You can add multiple websites, each with their own sitemaps file.
• Each website will have their own console within your Webmaster Central account from which you can view errors, troubleshoot or view statistics.

The Google Sitemaps is not a replacement for your HTML "Table of Contents" that most websites have designed for their users' navigation.  HTML Sitemaps are for directing the visitors on a website and is similar to a road map to help visitors if they get lost while navigating your site.

XML Sitemaps, on the other hand, is for Googlebot and it uses the xml protocol.  The Google team recommends that you have both, one for users and one for Googlebot. There is no need to link to your XML sitemaps file from your website. This can confuse your visitors. Don't worry - Googlebot will be able to find your sitemaps xml file. After you have specified the location of your sitemaps file from within your Webmaster Central account, Googlebot will know exactly where to look.

The more page rank you have, the deeper your site will get crawled.  But to help Googlebot index your website, Sitemaps is a useful tool that is free, easy-to-setup and beneficial for troubleshooting and managing your websites.  Webmasters applaud the Sitemaps team for putting all these tolls together in one convenient interface.

 

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