Our Top 10 Updates Wishlist For Google Webmaster Tools
Listen up Google, we know you’re all about transparency now, so we’ve come up with a brilliant list of things that we think you should introduce, and we believe it would lead to a win win situation. So without further ado, here is the Bronco SEO’s Google Webmaster Tools Wishlist:
1. Currently you only show a sample of links, but what happens if this doesn’t include bad links? Surely it wouldn’t harm you to show all of them?
2. Why oh why oh why, in the year 2012, do you still have stale data showing? We’re not talking a few days old, we’re talking *months* old. Last month I got a sitewide link removed for one of my clients, it’s was removed months ago yet it is still showing in Google Webmaster Tools “links to your site”. Please sort this out!
3. 404 errors aren’t that big a deal, please please please stop telling us we’ve got problems with our site when they aren’t. Sometimes it needs to show a 404 error! We do understand about soft 404′s however and why they are bad.
4. Tell us what we need to do to clean up the website – if it’s been hit by Penguin, say so – tell us which sites are bad – help us help you clean up the Internet.
5. What about if we’ve been hit with a Panda penalty – why not tell people? If they’ve got a dodgy looking site, tell them – people will fix it, Google will benefit from happier users and improved conversion rates no doubt, again win win.
6. Link removal tool – this is a must, I’ve got some nasty spammy links showing in Google Webmaster Tools for one of my clients that was blatantly used as negative SEO (it links to about 10 competitors in the same comment, it’s really spammy stuff). NB this was in draft before Matt told the world about the Tool
7. Proper, helpful responses – not some kind of mysterious cryptic message that doesn’t really help you fix anything.
8. How does click through compare to the average for that position.
9. Badges, like in Call of Duty, so if you get a website out of Penguin you get a “Pengiun” badge, Panda for Panda.
Badge image courtesy of Kool Badges
10. A share button to tell everyone when you’ve been hit by a bad update, such as:
“I’ve just been hit by the Penguin update, I have over 424,000 links that need removing, one by one” – Tweet this
Kieran Headley 217 days ago
I totally agree with number 4, If they tell us what is bad we can avoid it and by avoiding it these so called bad sites will either clean up their act or cease to exist.
Paul 216 days ago
If you know less, it is better for them..
When you lose any hope of return, they will send you AdWords offer
Good article.
Best Regards.
Rajesh Magar 216 days ago
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115326789223681674036Hi David,
It seems you been very frustrated about Google recent updates.. Don’t you?
And here I would like to inform you the one of this top 10 which you have is approved. Link removal tool is been published by Google named as “Disavow links” which is I sure will going to take care of your 424,000 Spam links.
Check link below for Google Link Removal Tool: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html
David Whitehouse 216 days ago
http://www.davidwhitehouse.co.uk/Hi Rajesh,
I’m not frustrated lol – it’s a blog post!
We don’t actually have 424,000 spam links, I made that up for the tweet as an example.
Also, we did actually point out in the post we are aware of the Disavow link tool, we actually tested it before it was released, see these blog posts:
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-disavow-tool-released-we-tested-it.html
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/disavow-tool-beta-test-recovery-laid-bare.html
Kathia 214 days ago
http://www.kathiarivera.comHi David¡¡ Agreed with you¡¡ regarding point 2. Why they dont updated the list of links. You tryed to clean your profile and they dont updated GWT link list.
Alfie Edwards 212 days ago
http://seo.bashbosh.comI absolutely agree with this list. Most of these “updates” might be extremely useful for all of us here who are addicted to Google Webmaster tool.