by Chris
Thursday, November 12 2009
Today, Google launched a new "Keyword" feature in Webmaster Tools. It seems pretty interesting, especially since it provides data on keyword distribution throughout an entire website. Log in to WMT today and check it out!
Here is an excerpt from their official post:
"As a post-Halloween treat, we're happy to announce a brand new user interface for our Keywords feature. We'll now be updating the data daily, providing details on how often we found a specific keyword, and displaying a handful of URLs that contain a specific keyword. The significance column compares the frequency of a keyword to the frequency of the most popular keyword on your site. When you click on a keyword to view more details, you will get a list of up to 10 URLs which contain that keyword."
Take a look at the official Google Webmaster Central Blog article here: Post-Halloween Treat: New Keywords User Interface!
by Chris
Sunday, November 08 2009
I realize this may be considered somewhat-stale news, but I figured it was worth posting none-the-less.
On November 2nd, 2009, Google released a web-wide PageRank (PR) update. This only the second update so far this year, and it is likely to be the last, for 2009 anyway.
It is somewhat curious this PR update was released not long after a very interesting response to a question I posted regarding changes to features in WMT, in the Google Webmaster Tools Help Forum, entitled "PageRank Distribution Removed From WMT".
In this thread, a Google employee expressed that PageRank is NOT important and people should forget about it. (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.)
Mixed messages much? A much much too much.
I could definitely go in to a long-winded diatribe about the irony in that particular thread, but alas, I will not -- at least not today. Perhaps I'll save it for a rainy day. Definitely worth reading through that thread though. Very informative.
As an aside, I would like to note that our company website and our company blog (this one) has gone from PR0 to PR2. Not an spectacular increase, but I'm certainly glad we are "off the floor." And there is nowhere to go but up! 
by Chris
Monday, September 21 2009
Google recently rolled-out an update for Webmaster Tools which added some parameter handling and filtering functionality.
It's actually quite useful, mainly because it enables the ability for you to tell Googlebot which query string parameters to globally ignore within your website's URLs. This will really help with getting the proper URLs indexed, and avoid duplicate content.
I am actually kind of amused, simply because I requested a similar feature a few months ago. I was having problems with Googlebot indexing the same page multiple times, only because I was using Google's URL Builder syntax in order to track incoming Twitter traffic via Google Analytics.
Perhaps I was on to something... Check out the Google Webmaster Tools Help Forum thread here: Indexing of Google's URL Builder links.
This new feature can be found under Site configuration > Settings > Parameter Handling
Below are some screenshots:
google-wmt-parameter1.gif (7.69 kb) (same as above)
google-wmt-parameter2.gif (18.52 kb) (larger view)
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