Easier navigation without GPS

Monday, July 01, 2013

Today we’re unveiling a shiny new navigation in Webmaster Tools. The update will make the features
you already use easier to find, as well as unveil some exciting additions.

Navigation reflects how search works

We’ve organized the Webmaster Tools features in groups that match the
stages of search:

• Crawl: see information about how we discover and crawl your content. Here you
  will find
  crawl stats,
  crawl errors,
  any URLs you’ve blocked from crawling,
  Sitemaps,
  URL parameters,
  and the
  Fetch as Google
  feature.
• Google Index: keep track of how many of your pages are in Google’s index and
  how we understand their content: you can monitor the overall indexed counts for your site
  (Index Status),
  see what keywords we’ve found on your pages
  (Content Keywords),
  or request to
  remove URLs
  from the search results.
• Search Traffic: check how your pages are doing in the search
  results—how people find your site
  (Search Queries),
  who’s recommended your site
  (Links to Your Site),
  and see a sample of pages from your site that have incoming links from other internal pages.
• Search Appearance: mark up your pages to help Google understand your content
  better during indexing and potentially influence how your pages appear in our search results.
  This includes the
  Structured Data dashboard,
  Data Highlighter,
  Sitelinks, and
  HTML Improvements.

Account-level administrative tasks now accessible from the Settings menu

Account-level admin tasks such as setting User permissions, Site Settings, and Change of Address
are now grouped under the gear icon in the top right corner so they’re always accessible to you:

This is the list of items as visible to site owners, “full” or “restricted” users will see a
subset of these options. For example, if you’re a “restricted” user for a site, the “Users and
Site Owners” menu item will not appear.

New Search Appearance pop-up

Beginner webmasters will appreciate the new
Search Appearance pop-up,
which can be used to visualize how your site may appear in search and learn more about the content
or structure changes that may help to influence each element:

To access the pop-up window, click on the question mark icon next to the Search Appearance menu in
the side navigation.

It includes the essential search result elements like title, snippet and URL, as well as optional
elements such as sitelinks, breadcrumbs, search within a site, event and product rich snippets,
and authorship information.

We hope the new navigation makes it easier for you to make the most of Webmaster Tools. As always,
if you have additional questions, you can post in the
Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by
Mariya Moeva,
Webmaster Trends Analyst