4 ms·

I used to sign up for webmaster tools but after a while I just didn't find the utility in it anymore. I'm able to control which domain Google sees as canonical

I used to sign up for webmaster tools but after a while I just didn't find the utility in it anymore. I'm able to control which domain Google sees as canonical (bare vs. www) without using webmaster tools. That was why I started using it in the first place. Though it's nice to see crawl errors or other potential issues. From what I understand GA isn't showing search keywords now for users that are logged into their Google account (totally frustrating change as more of your users seem to be logged in now). Webmaster tools does kind of show this information but without any of the neat metrics that go along with a GA report. I've also heard horror stories. There was an article (or possibly just a commenter) on here not too long ago that was describing how their position on the SERPs dropped dramatically just a week after signing up for webmaster tools. That kind of thing sticks with you, even if it's not true (and I do suspect there were other variables involved that he wasn't telling us). So, it's not all about whether someone is savvy or not. ;) Edit: Almost forgot! A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site. I'd forgotten how awesome that is.

adambyrtek 14y ago
> A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site. You can get the same information by simply googling for "link:example.com" (of course with your domain instead of example.com).
- coderdude 14y ago
  That information is not even close to being as complete as what they report to you in webmaster tools. There might be 2000 pages pointing back to your site and that query will return 50 (just an example, not hard numbers).
mjwalshe 14y ago
The really useful part is it gives you an insight into how google sees you site. And you might think you have done your canonical right - but I have seen some horrible mistakes made with the canonical tag.

adambyrtek 14y ago

> A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site. You can get the same information by simply googling for "link:example.com" (of course with your domain instead of example.com).

coderdude 14y ago
That information is not even close to being as complete as what they report to you in webmaster tools. There might be 2000 pages pointing back to your site and that query will return 50 (just an example, not hard numbers).

mjwalshe 14y ago

The really useful part is it gives you an insight into how google sees you site. And you might think you have done your canonical right - but I have seen some horrible mistakes made with the canonical tag.