The top 4 benefits for SEO Google Webmaster Tools, but even if you’re not an SEO, Google Webmaster Tools provides some fantastic technical information and control for the webmaster or IT department.
Here are top four technical benefits of using Webmaster Tools:
1. Malware Detection: As the owner of a WordPress blog, I cannot stress enough the benefit of the malware detection capabilities in Google Webmaster Tools. Last spring, many WordPress-based blogs and websites were attacked with malware because of vulnerability with a major hosting provider. Where Google Webmaster Tools Malware tool comes in, you have your site registered with Google Webmaster Tools (and verified). Google will notify you when it finds malware on the site. It shows you what code it views as malware and offers suggestions on how to eliminate the problem.
2. Site Performance: Last year Google announced that site load time would be a factor in the organic ranking algorithm. One of Google Labs latest additions to the Google Webmaster Tools suite is the Site Performance tool, which shows the site owner how fast the website loads and how it compares to other website load times. This reminded the webmaster group to tweak some settings to improve performance, hopefully preventing any impact on search rankings.
3. Set Crawl Rate and Detect Crawl Errors: Some sites, although likely not many, may find that Googlebot visits the website too often, taking up too much in website resources. In this case, you may want to define the crawl rate for Google. Under Site Configurations Settings in Google Webmaster Tools, site owners can tell Google how fast to crawl the site. Google Webmaster Tools also reports on crawl errors that Googlebot detects when crawling your website. This is essential data to review, because it can mean there’s a problem with pages that should be visible and are not.
4. Moving Historical Data from One Domain to Another: Finally, Google provides a handy way to preserve historical data from Google Webmaster Tools even if your profile needs to change because your domain is changing. If you have a new domain that your website is migrating to, simply establish that domain with Google Webmaster Tools and verify it, as you would any website. Between the SEO and technical benefits of Google Webmaster Tools, you should definitely be taking advantage of the powerful information and features available.
