Google Webmasters : Evolved and Evolving
The decade old Webmaster has come a long way with game changing upgrades to be called the new Google Search Console, 2019.
What is webmaster?
A Webmaster, could also be commonly known as a web technician or a web manager holds a pivotal role in the architecture of a website or multiple websites. A webmaster must have had a share in building the website but the role of a webmaster defines the role of maintaining and having complete access to the functioning of a website. A website can be portrayed to the world in a way the webmaster decides and wants to portray it. HTML is the most general scripting language that a webmaster must have in their armoury in order to maintain digitally healthy websites on a consistent front.
Apart from HTML, a webmaster could also possess knowledge of other digital scripting languages, some like JavaScript, JSP, NET, Python etc.
What is Google Webmaster tool?
Google Webmaster tool as the name suggests is an efficient assistant to any webmaster. A webmaster with the help of this tool could easily access and maintain all the attributes of a website.
A webmaster could also gain varied analytic data through the Google webmaster tool. It is an important tool of communication between the webmaster and Google. Necessary changes could be made according to the suggestions and statistics derived on the basis of Google’s viewpoint to the website.
As per May 20, 2015 the Google Webmaster Tools was re-branded as Google Search Console. Today’s search console has been a revolution when it comes to managing a website and taking leaps towards it’s growth.
Importance of Google Search Console:
Google Search Console is a very precise tool when it comes to supervising, maintaining and modification of your website derived from Google search results. It facilitates protection to your website from unnecessary spams, indexing and other issues hindering the performance of your website. It troubleshoots all the issues that could effect the user utility of your website. It thoroughly avoids security issues like hacking and malware.
Benefits of the Google Search Console:
- The console assists the webmaster efficiently in gaining all the search statistics on Google. It provides accurate data when it comes to the search results and also keeps the data up to date which is a big advantage for the webmaster to monitor updated trends and make changes or modifications to the website accordingly.
- The console also lists all the internal and external pages linked to the site. This list is also updated time to time.
- Google Search Console sends an alert notification for crawl errors or on attacks by malware like spams, viruses etc.
- Accurate keywords are suggested by the search console which could have a very positive impact on the growth of your website.
- The Console also provides the accurate insights on crawl rate and the other indexing activity that your website attracts.
Breakdown of Search Console Tool:
- Overview: The search console tool gives an overview of the overall performance of the website through a graph displaying the total search clicks day by day. It also displays the total valid pages that link to the website and also enhancements when it comes to mobile usability, Products and site links search box.
- Performance: The performance tab holds the data for the total clicks and the total impressions let it be queries, pages, countries, devices or search appearances.
- URL inspection: Through the console tool itself any URL can be inspected.
- Coverage: Coverage is such a tool on the console that facilitates the crawl statistics. All the crawl errors and malware issues are listed under this very tab.
- Mobile Usability: Mobile usability is one exclusive tab on the console that lists down all the smart phone crawlers and also all the errors that effect the accessibility of the website.
Webmaster back then :
( Image Source : Internet Archive Wayback Machine dated :August 8th ,2001)
https://web.archive.org/web/20010808104954/http://www.google.com/webmasters/
Almost a decade back, Google Webmasters was just a page of information with certain vital questions that Google answered providing a very narrow but one of its kind services that helped webmasters handle, maintain and analyse their websites. It facilitated assistance when it came to listing a website on Google,report errors regarding the website, corrections or termination of the existing websites. Rankings could also be tracked with the webmaster.
On 14th July 2008, Google launched its first ever official blog for webmaster users. Google revolutionized the way of management of websites and paved way for a new outlook for making your website a guaranteed hit. Providing relevant data contributing to the positive growth of a website promoting a business had been every webmaster’s dream and Google bought it to reality, that too for free.
Yesterday’s Webmaster, Today’s Google Search Console
The decade old Webmaster has come a long way with game changing upgrades to be called the new Google Search Console, 2019. The latest up gaming stunt was announced on September 19,2019 where Google introduced a completely new interface for the Google Search Console.
Google is making quick upgrades helping webmasters reach their goals easily and gaining the trust of webmasters all over the world.
Recent Upgrades:
Few recent enhancements done by Google to the console is the Auto DNS verification and attributes like the Sponsored attribute and the User Generated Content attribute. The Sponsored attribute assists in identifying links that were created as a part of advertisements and sponsorships while the UGC attribute is for identifying content like comments and forum posts.
Still with all the advancement also, there are certain factors that webmasters expect from platforms like Google.Some key features that could be added in the near future by Google could be HTML suggestions,Property Sets, Android Apps which have now become a new medium and also features like Blocked Resources and Index coverage.
With Google taking big leaps, other webmaster tools are trying to match Google’s footsteps and also go even further in certain aspects.
Bing Webmaster Tools is one of the closest competitors to Google along with other tools like Yandex webmaster tools and Duck duck go.
With the rapid pace improvements in Webmaster tools, webmaster services can soon be as manageable as running a simple mobile app. The future is certainly very advanced!
