Tools for Webmasters

Google doesn't simply leave you to fend for yourself in the Wild Wide Web. Google offers a number of tools that can help you understand how Google sees your site, visualize traffic at your site, advertise with Google, and make money with your site by placing ads for Google. Here is a quick look at the tools that can help you in your quest for top Google placement.

Google Sitemaps

The primary tool that Google offers for webmasters is Google Sitemaps (http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/). Sign up and register your site, and you'll receive detailed reports about when Google last crawled your site, and any errors Google encountered in the process.

In addition to detailed information about Google's last visit to your site, you'll find reports about your site's ranking in Google's index for various keywords. Sitemaps also features a tool to analyze your robots.txt file to verify that you're keeping the Google bot out of your site's private sections.

The tool's namesake is the Sitemap, a text file you can place on your site that directs the Google bot to recently updated content. Instead of randomly checking your pages, a Google Sitemap tells the Google bot exactly where to go when it visits your site. The Sitemap itself is an XML file that uses Google's Sitemap format (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html) to describe pages at a web site. Google even offers a free Python script called google-sitemap_gen (http://sourceforge.net/projects/goog-sitemapgen/) to help you generate a Sitemap automatically. There are a number of third-party plug-ins (http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html) that can help you automatically generate a Sitemap and keep the Google bot informed of changes to your site.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) is a free web traffic analysis tool that helps you visualize your site's traffic. Instead of relying on web logs generated by your server, you can place a few lines of JavaScript on every page of your site and let Google track your traffic. Google Analytics rivals most of the web log analysis tools available, and it can break down your traffic into a number of segments for review.

shows the traffic overview you're greeted with when you log in. It includes a weekly summary of visits and pageviews, a geographic summary of where visitors came from, graphs with the source of the visit, and a look at new versus returning visitors.

Google Analytics is integrated with Google AdWords to help you track the success of advertising campaigns. But you don't need to be an AdWords customer to take advantage of the tool.

Google AdWords

Google has built its financial empire on its ability to provide relevant ads to a receptive audience. Google knows that simply grabbing eyeballs isn't enough. It's the click-throughclicking an ad and following it to the advertiser and its productsthat counts. This is where Google's AdWords really shine. They're not simply rotating, flip-of-the-coin ads; they're every bit as relevant as the results of your search.

Query Google for "volvo safety", and Car Safety Report ads from Edmunds (http://www.edmunds.com) and insurance quotes from auto insurance providers appear alongside the Volvo safety reports and crash tests. Try pirates, and you'll be served (at least at the time of this writing) a Major League Baseball ad. What does MLB have to do with pirates, you ask? Well, Major League Baseball purchased an ad for the keyword because it thinks you might be looking for information about the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team. As of this writing, you'll also see an ad for Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. If Google has nothing relevant to show, it shows no ads at all.

As an advertiser base, AdWords is hundreds of thousands strong. Mom-and-pops to Fortune 500s are all looking to make their presence known and their wares available alongside Google search results and on thousands of sites across the Web.

In true Google style, AdWords is different from just about every advertising service you've ever seen. There's virtually no price barrier; anyone with a few marketing dollars in their pocket can buy a few keywords. Everything is handled through the AdWords site; you don't have to speak to a Google advertising executive to start your campaign. It's so simple that even the most inexperienced marketer can get a leg up. That said, there's a lot to AdWords, and its simplicity can be deceptive.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense (http://www.google.com/adsense) is Google's advertising service, designed to deliver advertising magic to your web site. With hundreds of thousands of advertisers signed up, there are sure to be ads that target your readers, whether your site is about baseball, computers, or rare-spoon collecting.

Sign up, choose the shape and size of the ads you want to display, copy some code, paste it into your site, and as your readers click the ads, earn money. Of course, it's not quite that simple; you need to focus on gathering readers and keeping them coming back for more.

The Google AdSense site provides detailed statistics of the number of ads shown and the number of ads clicked.

There are a number of types of ads you can show on your site. In addition to the standard banner and text ads, you can provide Referral buttons that point people to Google products. You can also provide a Google Search box for your readers with the option to earn money in the process.