Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 10:59 AM
Update: The described feature is no longer available.
When you plan to do something, are you a minimalist, or are you prepared for every potential scenario? For example, would you hike out into the Alaskan wilderness during inclement weather with only a wool overcoat and a sandwich in your pocket - like the naturalist John Muir (and you thought Steve McQueen was tough)?Or are you more the type of person where even on a day hike, you bring a few changes of clothes, 3 dehydrated meals, a couple of kitchen appliances, a power inverter, and a foot- powered generator, because, well, you never know when the urge will arise to make toast?
The Webmaster Tools team strives to serve all types of webmasters, from the minimalist to those who use every tool they can find. If you're reading this blog, you've probably had the opportunity to use the current version of Webmaster Tools, which offers as many features as possible just shy of the kitchen sink. Now there's something for those of you who would prefer to access only the features of Webmaster Tools that you need: we've just released Webmaster Tools Gadgets for iGoogle.
Here's the simple process to start using these Gadgets right away. (Note: this assumes you've already got a Webmaster Tools account and have verified at least one site.)
1. Visit Webmaster Tools and select any site that you've validated from the dashboard.
2. Click on the Tools section.
3. Click on Gadgets sub-section.
4. Click on the big "Add an iGoogle Webmaster Tools homepage" button.
5. Click the "Add to Google" button on the following confirm page to add the new tab to iGoogle.
6. Now you're in iGoogle, where you should see your new Google Webmaster Tools tab with a number of Gadgets. Enjoy!
You'll notice that each Gadget has a drop down menu at the top which lets you select from all the sites you have validated to see that Gadget's information for the particular site you select. A few of the Gadgets that we're currently offering are:
Crawl errors - Does Googlebot encounter issues when crawling your site?
Top search queries - What are people searching for to find your site?
External links - What websites are linking to yours?
We plan to add more Gadgets in the future and improve their quality, so if there's a feature that you'd really like to see which is not included in one of the Gadgets currently available, let us know. As you can see, it's a cinch to get started.
It looks like rain clouds are forming over here in Seattle, so I'm off for a hike.
40 comments:
Does not work with Google Apps start page...as excited as I am about this, it is useless to me if I cannot use it on that particular start page.
My iGoogle page is not the same Google Account as my Webmaster Tools - does that mean it won't work for me?
Boy I wish Google could get this Google Account stuff straightened out for those of us who have to work with clients...
It only works with the account your webmaster tools are associated with.
It's pretty easy to add the websites to the account you use for iGoogle though, I just added 15 sites in under 30 min.
Yes, the account thing needs to be straightened out. Google, don't handicap Google Apps customers. I have other Google Accounts but I like using all my services on 1 account.
I just want to echo what m and jim said. It should be possible to share Webmaster Tools with other persons because of clients.
This is honestly the most
lame use of Google gadgets I have ever seen
Nice. Please add the "dynamic height" feature, the gadgets are rather huge.
Living in the UK, I use the Google.co.uk version of iGoogle, and the gadgets don't work there, they all just show the Webmaster Tools front page within the gadget window.
Doesnt seem to work for me. Just keeps adding the first website in the list of websites in GWT.
Nice idea, really useful features.
However, some improvements are needed I think.
First of all: I have multiple websites for my account, and every time I start my browser I have to switch all the 8 gadgets to the site I want to see.
I hope at least if the gadgets to be able to remember the last settings. But the best would be if could add multiple tabs for different sites.
Moreover: some design improvements are needed. These 8 gadgets are now too big for my 1280x1024 screen, however the information displayed would fit in the half of the screen... Please make it dynamic height and/or join some of them inte multiple tabbed, but only one gadgets...
(I have no idea how to quote someone on Blogger; I don't normally use it)
"It's pretty easy to add the websites to the account you use for iGoogle though, I just added 15 sites in under 30 min"
Yea, but I have over 225 sites in my account, 3/4ths of which are for my clients.
Yep, I concur w/ everyone on the account issue. I took carry a multiplicity of accounts. There's got to be a way for a user to have a primary account and then service all related accounts under one master account. I also ditched the Google Apps concept a while back as it is by far way too limited for ubiquitous compared to a regular account.
I concur with all the issues around Google accounts. It's extremely challenging to manage multiple sites. It really isn't worth the effort to do this since my iGoogle login is different from my webmaster tools.
Great for a small business - as are most webmaster tools. Google needs to start thinking bigger and consider the enterprise sites - the ones that are much more difficult to index efficiently and correctly. It would behoove Google to develop webmaster tools that worked for enterprise sites so your indexes were cleaner and your search results more relevant.
Here are
some specific suggestions on how to improve the gadgets.
Google Analytics gadgets would be extremely handy as well. All of it seems to be in 'gadget' form already - this should not be a hard coversion imo.
thank you.
Very good feature indeed.. thanks you google
i agree, very handy gadget.
one thing tho, i agree with MAti, i have a bunch of sites and have to keep changing the one i want to see. some kind of default site setting would be extremely useful and not very difficult to implement i'm sure.
thanks.
This is awesome, but probably could have been condensed into a *gadget* not *gagdets* :) Sweet work though!
How about the "why we are getting freaking penalized" gadget?
Any plan to allow the owner of the site to approve another Google account to see the widgets?
I haven't had a problem with any Google Gadgets.
Though, if they could whip up a quick "whiny ingrates" gadget, it would wipe most of the comments off of here.
Seriously, some of you people must really suck if you can't find a way to thank somebody for giving you something where they're trying to help you out. Instead you only bitch about it.
It's called "constructive criticism" for a reason.
Allow the change in site to be universal: http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/pubsub.html
First off, thanks for the gadget. It's very convenient. So far my only suggestion is to enable a way to select an account for all gadget windows with one click (not sure if that came across as clear as I wanted). In other words, it would be nice if I didn't have to select the account I want to view in each box. Thanks again!
Thanks for all the great suggestions, folks! We'll definitely take them into consideration as we work on v2 of the gadgets.
@chrisminett:
We're aware of the problems with Google.co.uk and are looking into it.
@incrediblehelp:
If you click on the site URL you'll see a drop-down list of all your sites and you can switch between them. I agree that it should be a bit more obviously-clickable. :)
@Tanya:
Could you give more details about what aspect(s) of our tools don't work for an enterprise site?
I wish you could resize the gadgets on the home page. they seem to take up more space then they should. (e.g. - I see a massive box and only half of it is being used on all of the gadgets).
Since I added this tab to my iGoogle page I have been unable to add or delete tabs or add new content to page. I've tried it in all major browsers so it is not a local problem.
Hi Errol:
I'm sorry to hear that.
We tried to reproduce what you're describing in a variety of browsers and accounts, but were unable to get the same results. Can you provide us any other information that might help us figure out whether this problem is related to our gadgets?
I had problems with the tab as soon as I added it to my iGoogle page. It kept reloading so I tried removing it but was unable to, so I removed all the gadgets but I still can't delete the tab, even after renaming it. Am still unable to add new content to start page. Didn't have any problems before this.
Great tool, i will add it to my blog
People who will want to really use this feature will be masters or more site than one.
Allow them to easily add the tools from another way.
- if added from the tools in domain menue, name the tab with the domain not google webmaster tools.
- most likely you will want to see one thing across all domains, not per domain a tab. allow me easily to add one gadget (like crawl errors) of all selected domains to one new tab on the igoogle.
keep the current way for basic users and provide the extended options for expert users.
The tools seem interesting - I'm going to dig into them. We already use google analytics and it is a great tool kit - so these look like good bets as well.
Cheers!
Hi,
Nice and great too and it helped me a lot.
Thanks,
Guddu
http://freesourceutilityhelp.googlepages.com
I can't add the top searches to my Igoogle- couldn't find it, same for the external links, I can see only the crawler errors from webmaster tools
I think too that the tools seem interesting - I was looking into them. We already use google analytics and it is a great tool kit - so these look like good bets as well.
Cheers!
I just wanted to let Errol know that I have also had a similar, if not identical, problem with iGoogle. I tried to delete my tab, but it continues to reload. I even tried deleting each individual gadget, and saved my changes, but it continues to reload. It won't allow me to edit anything, or add anything either. It is extremely frustrating to say the least. Thank you for your posts.
Why does this new canvas view waste an inch of space on the left? The tabs used to be on top. But now they're on the left and all my gadgets are to the right. Which is a waste of screen width...
I was perfectly satisfied with plain old Google. I had my gadgets where I wanted them and could also move them around on the page. Then somehow I suddenly faced iGoogle and 1) can't get my Google page back with my gadgets and 2) I can't stand iGoogle and don't know how to delete gadgets or move them into spots that I want. Please help.
iGoogle troubleshooting :
http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=69569
Scroll down to export your settings, then reset the settings then import them again.
Hope it helps
I have been trying to get my iGoogle page gadget to display my verified URL for over a month. I have been trying various things with no success I am not sure what it needs because it asks to be verified and on web masters tools it says it is verified. Maybe I am missing the obvious, all I want is everything to work as it is written in the help files and all I am doing is spending time reading FAQ in each and every section of the google products with no success no matter what I try. Here my URL - sites.google.com/site/growyofood
Hi everyone,
Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Central Help Forum.
Thanks and take care,
The Webmaster Central Team
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