New Stats On Queries & More With Google Sitemaps

[dannysullivan]

Google Sitemaps just gained some new things many webmasters have wished for, such as query stats and indexing problem reports. Check it out? What do you think?

[Phoenix]

This is quite neat. I already have 2 sites verified and showing some statistics. It could be valuable for evaluating possible penalties on a site and also seeing what search queries the site is coming up for, and what people are clicking on. Very nice!

However I am bit disappointed with the page analysis tool, it only tells me what type of content "text/html" and what type of encoding the pages use. I guess I am not complaining, as if it started telling where to stick my keywords then it would put be out of a job.

The "crawl stats" are good. Its gives a visual representation of how the distribution of your pagerank goes across your site. Either high, medium, or low, or not at all. There it also shows HTTP errors, urls restricted, unreachable urls, urls timed out, urls not followed. Hmmm.... could be useful.

[sportsguy]

While I'm disappointed to find some errors on maps for domains in my account today, I think the stats available are great!

Excellent data to share.

Now, if they'd just tell us how many times people search on phrases...

[myebux]

I have two accounts with google sitemaps and have yet to see the stats. I have to admit, I'm beginning to feel uneasy about google and the direction they are taking things. Sure sitemaps, desktop search and google analytics are great tools but, it kinda freaks me out. They're becoming more and more like microsoft and ma bell. They tout how helpful the services will be for webmasters but, just think how useful that information is to google. I don't know if I want google to know everything about my business let alone my computer.

Steve

I have many clients registered with Google Sitemaps and the new reporting features provide some great insights into Google's crawl "experience". But I do have concerns that border on the "John Lithgow in the wing seat of a 747 during a lightning storm at night" side of things. For example: Google is tracking clicks to SiteMapped sites from its SERPs and providing a list of the top 5 keywords. The Google Page Analysis is reported to be analyzing "content and encoding of your pages". What's to stop Google from sending an email to site owners saying "If you buy an Ad for this keyword or tweak the code on said page, you will get more targeted traffic for said keyword"? If that happens, why does a site owner need the middle man (yours truly)?

[learner]

Originally Posted by Oliver

What's to stop Google from sending an email to site owners saying "If you buy an Ad for this keyword or tweak the code on said page, you will get more targeted traffic for said keyword"?

For a moment, forget what you know and re-read this one more time - most people who pay others for doing SEO stuff for them wouldn't even understand meaning of the message.

While I agree with you there's some risk of disintermediation, it's like with everything else - low-hanging fruit is the first to go. It's gonna take a while, though.

[PhilC]

Google has been getting click-through information for years. It's been in plain site for anyone who cared to look at the serps code to see. There hasn't been anything to stop Google from doing what you suggested for a long time. But I have a question - so what?

They aren't going to tell anyone to tweak their code, but they were cold calling website owners when AdSense began, and there's no reason why they shouldn't cold call website owners to advertise with AdWords. It's business. There's nothing wrong with it.