Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 3:30 PM
We've been listening to you at conferences, user studies, forums and blogs and we decided to start from the ground up with a brand new Webmaster Tools design! It was much needed, and the end result is beautiful in our eyes:
Highlights
The new user interface is available at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/new. The old user interface will continue to be available for a couple of weeks to give you guys time to adjust and provide feedback.
We did our best to get the product localized; however, you may notice a few missing translations in some areas of the user interface. We apologize for the inconvenience and when we switch everyone over in a couple of weeks, we'll fully support 40 languages. The one exception will be our Help Center, which will be available in 21 languages going forward.
We're really excited about this launch, and hope you are as well. Tell us what you think and stay tuned for more updates!
Highlights
- One-stop Dashboard: We redesigned our dashboard to bring together data you view regularly: Links to your site, Top search queries, Sitemaps, and Crawl errors.
- More top search queries: You now have up to 100 queries to track for impressions and clickthrough! In addition, we've substantially improved data quality in this area.
- Sitemap tracking for multiple users: In the past, you were unable to monitor Sitemaps submitted by other users or via mechanisms like robots.txt. Now you can track the status of Sitemaps submitted by other users in addition to yourself.
- Message subscription: To make sure you never miss an important notification, you can subscribe to Message Center notifications via e-mail. Stay up-to-date without having to log in as frequently.
- Improved menu and navigation: We reorganized our features into a more logical grouping, making them easier to find and access. More details on changes.
- Smarter help: Every page displays links to relevant Help Center articles and by the way, we've streamlined our Help Center and made it easier to use.
- Sites must be verified to access detailed functionality: Since we're providing so much more data, going forward your site must be verified before you can access any features in Webmaster Tools, including features such as Sitemaps, Test Robots.txt and Generate Robots.txt which were previously available for unverified sites. If you submit Sitemaps for unverified sites, you can continue to do so using Sitemap pings or by including the Sitemap location in your robots.txt file.
- Removal of the enhanced Image Search option: We're always iterating and improving on our services, both by adding new product attributes and removing old ones. With this release, the enhanced Image Search option is no longer a component of Webmaster Tools. The Google Image Labeler will continue to select images from sites regardless of this setting.
The new user interface is available at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/new. The old user interface will continue to be available for a couple of weeks to give you guys time to adjust and provide feedback.
We did our best to get the product localized; however, you may notice a few missing translations in some areas of the user interface. We apologize for the inconvenience and when we switch everyone over in a couple of weeks, we'll fully support 40 languages. The one exception will be our Help Center, which will be available in 21 languages going forward.
We're really excited about this launch, and hope you are as well. Tell us what you think and stay tuned for more updates!
39 comments:
It might be fresh, but it's a lot harder to use, if you have dozens or hundreds of profiles to manage. The old interface has a drop-down menu that allows you to quickly navigate through all of your websites.
After extensive review of the new dashboard all I can say is "CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP".... Its about time! And it shows site owners like me that Google is the reason we purchase all our web sites thru them!.... I would also like to add that the webmasters fourm and the google employees are very helpful to answer questions very fast! THANK YOU GOOGLE!! BADGE D.V.S. LLC. Oregon.
Awesome
You guys are rocking. Really webmaster tools helps us a lot in finding things like issues, errors, links etc... about websites. Glad to know to that you guys are moving step forward in organizing things.
Thanks
Sankar Datti
Looking really cool. Overall i must say that data about my website is now more organized. Kudos to Google team. One thing i noticed that some of option are not available like i am unable to find the Re-Inclusion request option?
Hi
I just love you Google guys.
My job is extremely time consuming. Understanding my website from a viewers point of view used to take ages, was difficult, expensive, and the information I did get was very hard to interpret. There was no sense of immediacy, the information I had to hand wasn't dynamic. I couldn't understand or trust what I was seeing.
Now, things are very different, and getting better all the time. I just can't thank you all at Google enough... You're the best, and you have helped my work become better known, better directed. You have directly generated work for me, helped me understand my audience, what they want and are looking for.
I would never normally feel comfortable saying these things, but praise is due.
What I do find astonishing is that you (Google) do listen to people like me. This does take some getting used to...
Thank you, Google. And please keep it coming!
Regards,
Griff
www.griffwason.com
The biggest issue for us which hasn't been fixed, is the ability to easily manage LOTS of sites. Currently you have to keep hitting next over and over to get to the next page of sites rather than having a drop down menu like you have in Google analytics which allows you to quickly pull up a site... =(
It has been mentioned a couple of times already but can you please please please make it easier when you have a lot of websites on one account? Google Analytics has the nifty search feature and the OLD Google Webmaster let you use a dropdown box. In the new layout it is a total farce to get from one site to another.
@Brian, @TheWeirdOne. Thanks for the feedback regarding multiple sites.
in beginning its kind a hard to find things because I get use to old design, but all in all I really like new clean design. Good job!!!
Sagar: Awesome stuff. I liked the way you presented it so crisply and briefly in the video, too.....TCK
The new look looks great, thank you so much.
Keep up the good work.
in the new version I have a higher number of External links than the old version (6,509 vs 4,257). That happens for all my websites. Wich is the correct number?
I like the new design. It makes it easier to find the most often used things easier to get to. Thanks!
@polopoli if you can post your issue on our forum with the site URL we can investigate it further
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en
The only downside is the inability to toggle between sites. I manage a lot of site using webmaster tools, and the lack of toggling takes more time.
The layout looks nice though, and I'm sure that once I get used to it, everything will be fine.
Before, it was in your face immediately, now you have to click several times to see Sitemap status, etc.
I think it's a big step backwards!
just learn how to use it，so confused with sitemap，don't know how to make one。
Where is the Index stats???
I like it, but I feel as though function are being lost.
Hi
Thanks for share this video
I think it's a big step backwards!
@nate index stats was a read only page so we moved it to your help center: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35256
@yatram, if you could provide us some more detailed feedback with your issues on our forum it would be great: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en
I see a drop down menu listing all of my domains. I'm curious why people are asking for a drop down menu when it is already there.
Getting to my sitemap was one click. Same as before. The only difference was that I clicked on a different area of the screen, lower right.
Are we seeing different versions of the new Webmaster Tools?
There seems to have fluctuating data between the original and the new look. I'm relying on the data contained in the original version for now. It seems more accurate.
@stevena, what you are seeing is the final version. That drop down you are referring to only lists 5 sites so with people that have more than 5 sites it is a bit hard to manage.
Our backend pipelines for the new UI should all be up to date. If you are noticing major discrepancies, please post your issues on our forum:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en
Hi,
There is an issue with the meta tag code that is now displayed when one adds a new site. It misses a "/" at the end of the tag, just before the the tag ends.
So what should be
/>
is currently just
>
@Pi, thanks for catching that. We will fix it.
@BrianH,@weirdone i hacked together a little greasemonkey script that makes it a bit easier to manage a larger number of sites in the new UI. it is still very preliminary, but I was hoping you could give it a try and let me know how it works for you:
http://bit.ly/16srmb
This does require FF3, and GreaseMonkey 0.8 or higher.
Sagar,
I appreciate the script but it wouldn't install for me. Greasemonkey recognized it by the install button did nothing. Using FF3 and newest Greasemonkey .8+.
-Thanks
I'm getting a 404 error on the Webmaster Tools link in all my client accounts, since yesterday.
@Brian, so does the site picker render as usual for you. Can you check the Error Console in Firefox and see if any messages are spit out.
@John, can you post your issue on the forum so we can diagnose it further: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en
What a surprise to see that on this very special and reverenced day of remembering our heroes, the GOOGLE logo on the home page doesn't have a patriotic flare or design to it!
I really like the different logos that are used for holidays and special happenings. But did I miss the one for Memorial Day? I realize you can't do a different logo for every single day, but I do feel Memorial Day should have been recognized.
if i want to move back to the old layout then what i need to do, please some one email me the steps to ,my email id 121healthinfo@gmail.com
as i find new one very cumber some to use
thanx
I think this new webmaster tools look horrible. Old one was much much better like this. UNUSABLE
HATE IT - WANT BACK OLD
@lpool, can you be more specific as to what is frustrating you?
I just posted this on another thread, but this thread seems the more appropriate, so repeating here.
From a quick scan of comments, I can see that I am not alone in my frustration.
I see there is some solution listed. I will try it out. I presently manage all my Google stuff in Chrome and it is a pain to have to do from FF since I do my development there, but if it works, it'll be worth.
-----------------------------
So I'm not liking this new layout much. I suppose partly it is just different and I'll get used to that, but I don't think I am going to get used to the terrible, terrible new navigation setup.
I have a number of sites and am about to put up a whole lot more. This tiny drop down list that holds just only 7 sites means I need to constantly go back to the main page - this adds many, many, many extra mouse clicks to navigate where i want to be.
Say, for instance, I want to confirm sitemaps for all sites (as I just tried to do). Old site, I'd navigate to correct page for 1st site and then click thru the list to see all the others - with .
Now I can check a few that way, but then I have to go back to the main page for the rest. This involves at least 3 extra clicks PER SITE. That's for every webmaster page I want to check.
This is a definite step backwards in site usability. Changing navigation to require 3 clicks for what used to require 1 is never a good idea.
Not to mention that the tiny list items is reshuffling itself at random - so even those sites are not that easy to work with. What was last on the list is next time first for no apparent reason. How can that be? Can't keep track of what I'm doing if the menu choices are moving all over the place.
Why can't you do like Analytics and have the drop down include the entire list of sites? What's so hard about that? And pls keep a hard alpha order to the dropdown site list.
I tried this greasemonkey script. It didn't work for me. Is it working for other people?
A number of errors in FF3 error console. Some pasted below:
Error: $x("//head")[0] is undefined
Source File: file:///C:/Users/JLK3/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/tf4tddg3.default/gm_scripts/tweaks_to_the_new_ui_for/tweaks_to_the_new_ui_for.user.js
Line: 21
2 errors of the above type. They look identical. Maybe from trying the page a few times.
Then:
Error: Permission denied to call method Location.toString
Not sure if the 2nd one is related to your thing or not.
Sorry to gripe so much today, but I'm using this new setup for the first time in-depth today. Have been tinkering with various things for several hours now and this new navigation is really terrible - at least for people with more than 6 sites.
So many extra mouse clicks it is absolutely unbelievable - did you even look at how people used the site before?
And so much harder to keep track of your work as you go. I mean this is a tool we need to do work on - it not an aesthetics playground. I'm having to keep a separate handwritten tally sheet to check off the steps as I go since I can't just tick them off in my head as I move down the drop down list.
Not sure how this new setup got thru your design review process, but it is a major step backward in usability.
I give it two thumbs down with a big bronx cheer overlay.
I hope you can get that FF3 greasemonkey script working. I'm no programmer, but if there is anything I can do to assist, please advise.
This is a very interesting post, and the comments are also fantastic to read. I’ll have to have a little re-think about my own contact form on our new website, as this poses some interesting questions.
www.ibowtech.com
Hi,
Some great stuff going on.
However we seem to have lost the filtering and sorting of Search Result Positions (in a list form rather than individually) of each keyword.
I found this useful for optimising content which was just outside the 1st page and I could identify this really quickly with the older system.
Or have I missed somthing with the new one?
Thanks
Nick
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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