<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools" title="Google Webmaster Tools"><span style="color: windowtext;">Google Webmaster Tools</span></a> is really very helpful for webmasters to recognize potential issues before they become real problems. Some of the issues that you can spot there are relatively small (such as having duplicate titles and descriptions), other issues can be bigger (such as your website not being reachable, broken URLs etc.).&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><br></p><p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">While Google Webmaster Tools can't tell you exactly what you need to change, it can help you to recognize that there could be a problem that needs to be addressed. <br> <br> Let's take a look at a few things of Google Webmaster.</span> <br></p><p><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Does your website have systematically broken links somewhere?</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><br> <br> Modern content management systems (CMS) can make it easy to create issues that affect a large number of pages. Sometimes these issues are straightforward and visible when you view the pages; sometimes they're a bit harder to spot on your own. If an issue like this creates a large number of broken links, they will generally show up in the "Web crawl" diagnostics section in your Webmaster Tools account (provided those broken URLs return a proper 404 result code). In one recent case, a site had a small encoding issue in its RSS feed, resulting in over 60,000 bad URLs being found and listed in their Webmaster Tools account. As you can imagine, Google would have preferred to spend time crawling content instead of these 404 errors :).<br> <br> <b>Is your website redirecting some users elsewhere?</b><br> <br> For some websites, it can make sense to concentrate on a group of users in a certain geographic location. One method of doing that can be to redirect users located elsewhere to a different page. However, keep in mind that Googlebot might not be crawling from within your target area, so it might be redirected as well. This could mean that Googlebot will not be able to access your home page. If that happens, it's likely that Webmaster Tools will run into problems when it tries to confirm the verification code on your site, resulting in your <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Tools/browse_thread/thread/809674e664cb2db7/d16d20bde9856c5a" title="site could become unverified"><span style="color: windowtext;">site becoming unverified</span></a>. This is not the only reason for a site becoming unverified, but if you notice this on a regular basis, it would be a good idea to investigate. On this subject, always make sure that Googlebot is treated the same way as other users from that location, otherwise that might be seen as <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-google-defines-ip-delivery.html" title="cloaking"><span style="color: windowtext;">cloaking</span></a>. <br> <br> <b>Is your server unreachable when Google try to crawl?</b><br> <br> It can happen to the best of sites—servers can go down and firewalls can be overly protective. If that happens when Googlebot tries to access your site, Google won't be able crawl the website and you might not even know that Google tried. Luckily, Google keep track of these issues and you can spot <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/5cb4db2a6e349c2e" title="&amp;quot;Network unreachable&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;robots.txt unreachable&amp;quot; errors"><span style="color: windowtext;">"Network unreachable" and "robots.txt unreachable" errors</span></a> in your Webmaster Tools account when Google can't reach your site.<br> <br> <b>Has your website been hacked?</b><br> <br> Hackers sometimes add strange, off-topic hidden content and links to questionable pages. If it's hidden, you might not even notice it right away; but nonetheless, it can be a big problem. Google Webmaster Tools can <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Tools/browse_thread/thread/9afe82fed4b9e2ee/" title="show you those keywords in the &amp;quot;What Googlebot sees&amp;quot; section"><span style="color: windowtext;">show you keywords from your pages in the "What Googlebot sees" section</span></a>, so you can often spot a hack there. If you see totally irrelevant keywords, it would be a good idea to investigate what's going on. You might also try setting up <a href="http://www.google.com/alerts"><span style="color: windowtext;">Google Alerts</span></a> or doing queries such as [site:example.com spammy words], where "spammy words" might be words like porn, viagra, tramadol, sex or other words that your site wouldn't normally show. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><br> There are a lot of issues that can be recognized with Webmaster Tools. It's a great idea to check your Webmaster Tools account to make sure that you catch any issues before they become real problems. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">&nbsp;</span></p> 2008-10-06T06:20:24Z -16.9185 472 1864 true 15 18440 google-webmaster-tools-for-advanced-website-diagnostics 0 2008-10-09T05:29:05Z 2008-10-09T05:29:05Z

Google Webmaster Tools is really very helpful for webmasters to recognize potential issues before they become real problems. Some of the issues that you can spot there are relatively small other issues can be bigger.

0 2009-02-24T09:46:22Z