New Google Webmaster Tools

If you have not checked out Google's Webmaster Tools, you might want to do that. They have just added four new tools that the average site owner and self-SEOer might find useful:

Googlebot Activity Reports : Shows you the number of pages Google crawls from your site every day. This can certainly help you identify problem areas of your site or implement strategies to make certain areas of your site more accessible to Google.

Crawl Rate Control : Temporarily adjust the rate at which Google crawls your site. If you have bandwidth issues you can slow Googlebot down or speed it up if you got plenty of bandwidth to spare. The change is good for 90 days at which Google reverts back to whatever their default for your site would be.

Enhanced Image Search : This looks like another tool that helps Google more than it helps the user. Help Google help others search your images!

Number of URLs Submitted : Google will tell you how many URLs they found in your sitemap. Good for larger sites.I know many SEOs who stay as far away from Google Webmaster Tools as possible, concerned about privacy issues and/or Google knowing too much about a site.

While not all of their webmaster tools are great for everyone, I think Google is putting together an impressive toolset that's helpful to all webmasters, SEO and site owners. You'll have to judge for yourself giving Google too much access to your site is really too much for comfort.

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( by Stoney G deGeyter )