SEO Blog

Google Webmasters Tools is a hugely informative and extremely useful application for any web developer, site owner or SEO expert. It has a constantly evolving list of features designed to pinpoint issues within a website, including broken links, both internal and external.

As with all Google products, Webmasters Tools is subject to a number of regular updates. However, one earlier this week will be of significant interest, particularly to those who are interested in optimising their site.

This new feature is called Fetch as Googlebot. It may not sound like much, but this could well further break down the barrier that many have between deciphering what is visible to a search engine and what is visible to a user.

Essentially the Googlebot is a programme that reads each and every page that Google indexes. It assigns it a value by digesting the information found on the individual page and assessing its relevance to certain key phrases. Therefore, being able to see exactly what it is able to see will help shed a little more light on the whole optimisation process.

Sometimes, particularly with Internet users who are perhaps a little unsure of how to optimise a website, there is a misunderstanding over content that is visible to users and content that is visible to search engine crawlers – like Googlebot. While a huge image on your home page may look good, a crawler simply won’t be able to see it. Conversely, you may have content that is invisible to users, hidden within the HTML and Meta, but is picked up by the spiders.

Fetch as Googlebot should help remove these confusions and help anybody see exactly what is being indexed. If your site isn’t being ranked as highly as you’d expect, this could well prove invaluable. For SEO experts it will save a lot of time and effort crawling through the coding and on site content, as it processes it all on your behalf.

So whilst it might not sound like much, having a Googlebot’s eye view of your website could prove to be hugely beneficial. It will help you to understand any issues that your site has, whether visible or otherwise, and can show you exactly where optimisation is required. A nifty programme I’m sure you’ll agree, and it will certainly make a welcome addition to the already excellent Google Webmaster Tools package.