So, you’ve created a site for a client (or yourself), and the site is live on the internet. What do you do now? Well, if you want people to find your site, you submit it to Google. Then, you wait. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to find out if your site was in Google and how it was showing up (other than running google searches obsessively)?

There is a way: Google’s webmaster tools. I learned about them when a client was having problems with Google; her site had been blocked for spreading malware (a long story for another post). While researching that problem, I discovered Google’s webmaster tools, a free service from Google that lets you track how Google sees and ranks your site.

In this post, I’ll show you how to sign up for Google’s webmaster tools and how to add sites to your dashboard. In future posts, we’ll discuss what you can do with the various tools.

Sign Up

To sign up for Google’s webmaster tools, go to this page, and log in using your Google Account name and password.

Add a Site

When you log in, you’ll see your dashboard. Once you’ve added sites, they’ll all be listed here. Let’s add a site now:

Type a url into the text box, and click the Add Site button. You should get some interesting information right away. For example, you’ll see when Google last accessed your home page. That’s when Google last checked your site and recorded it in their search database. It’s useful information. I recently added a client’s site and immediately noticed that Google had already accessed the home page. However, it had done so when the site consisted of nothing more than a placeholder page, so it’s not really current.

You’ll also know whether or not your site is included in Google’s index, which it must be if it’s going to show up in a search.

Verify the Site

If you want more detailed information about your site, you’ll need to verify it. There are two ways to do this; you can add a meta tag to your index file or upload a blank html file with the name they give you. Basically, Google is making sure that you have access to the site that you’re adding to your dashboard. I usually just upload the html file.

Create a blank text file, and give it the name specified by Google. Then, upload the file to your site. When you click the Verify button, Google will go to your site and check that the file exists. If Google finds what it’s looking for, you’re verified, and ready to go.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 2:45 pm and is filed under RESOURCES, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.