Google has recently improved Webmaster tools. As I only stumbled across the changes myself I thought it might be useful to note them on Digital Media Minute. I don’t consider myself a ‘stats junkie’ but I think a lot of people will find value in the detail that Google now gives you about just how well your site ranks in its index for the keywords that bring you visitors.
If you’re familiar with Webmaster tools you’ll know how you used to be able to see how much traffic you got from Google for a given keyword, relative to your other top keywords. This was expressed as a percentage of your overall search traffic, so you could discover that 4% of all visitors who arrived via Google came from people typing in the term “iPhone applications”. You would also find that longtail variants of the term like ‘cool iPhone apps’, etc. drew a percentage as well, and there was some value in knowing that Google accorded your site some authority to this general subject, of course. Also, I was often surprised what blog posts/queries drew visitors for me (though Analytics does a pretty good job of this in my opinion.) At any rate, knowing the importance of each keyword relative to other keywords on your site is nowhere near as interesting as knowing what Webmaster Tools will now tell you, which is how important a page or pages on your site are for a given search query, relative to the entire Google index, and other details too:
Most people probably realize that in a given month the SERP position of a site’s pages will vary, and that on a given day different Google data centers around the world might rank a page on your site in different positions. I was surprised that even on a given day (presumably due to geography) a page might be in position #2 for a term, all the way to the second page or beyond. Naturally in the course of a month placement for a page varies even more.
It’s fascinating stuff, even if–like me–you don’t obsess over SEO as you are doing posts and articles. If any Digital Media Minute readers have discovered more goodies in this Webmaster Tools redesign, or if you think I have misinterpreted anything in the new format, please let us know in the comments.
