I used to sign up for webmaster tools but after a while I just didn't find the utility in it anymore. I'm able to control which domain Google sees as canonical (bare vs. www) without using webmaster tools. That was why I started using it in the first place. Though it's nice to see crawl errors or other potential issues.

From what I understand GA isn't showing search keywords now for users that are logged into their Google account (totally frustrating change as more of your users seem to be logged in now). Webmaster tools does kind of show this information but without any of the neat metrics that go along with a GA report.

I've also heard horror stories. There was an article (or possibly just a commenter) on here not too long ago that was describing how their position on the SERPs dropped dramatically just a week after signing up for webmaster tools. That kind of thing sticks with you, even if it's not true (and I do suspect there were other variables involved that he wasn't telling us).

So, it's not all about whether someone is savvy or not. ;)

Edit: Almost forgot! A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site. I'd forgotten how awesome that is.

> A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site.

You can get the same information by simply googling for "link:example.com" (of course with your domain instead of example.com).

That information is not even close to being as complete as what they report to you in webmaster tools. There might be 2000 pages pointing back to your site and that query will return 50 (just an example, not hard numbers).

The really useful part is it gives you an insight into how google sees you site.

And you might think you have done your canonical right - but I have seen some horrible mistakes made with the canonical tag.

For those who haven't used it, Google Webmaster Tools provides better keyword and search analysis than Google Analytics does. It's a great tool set.

It's definitely not better keyword analysis, it's better then nothing keyword analysis. Not only are the aggregate numbers unhelpful, the "top keywords" are usually pretty far off from reality.

Maybe I'm missing something - I'm no Google Analytics expert. Here's my reasoning as to why I like Google Webmaster Tools better than Google Analytics ...

For keywords, Google Analytics shows:

  - Visits
  - Pages/Visit
  - Avg. Visit Duration
  - % New Visits
  - Bounce Rate

Google Webmaster Tools:

  - Impressions
  - Clicks
  - CTR
  - Avg. position (SERP)

To me, the Google Webmaster Tools information is more actionable. I have a number of different pages optimized or certain key phrases. I can look at keyword rankings and prioritize SEO. I can spot high impression keywords that I don't have a targeted page for, and create one. I can look at the CTR and see which page descriptions could be tweaked to get a higher CTR. The GA information is interesting, but ultimately not as useful for my needs.

can't you verify with google analytics account now? the verification key isn't necessary right?

That's true. There's actually four ways to verify a site (meta tag, upload a file, DNS, or Google Analytics): http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

Lots of people use the meta tag method though.

Hi Matt,

The site won't show those that aren't doing non-meta ways so I suspect the actual registration would be higher than this. Although you can see the actual trending at http://trends.builtwith.com/Web-Master/Google-Webmaster