Google Webmaster Tools provides a large amount of features to help configure, maintain and troubleshoot your website. One of these features is the “What Google Sees” page which provides some insight into how the Googlebot is interpreting your site. Provided are a list of phrases, keywords and content types which can be used as a troubleshooting tool, as well as a valuable insight into how your site is viewed.
The phrases section lists external links to your site and the anchor text these links are using as well as possible variations. The content section shows the distribution of file type and encodings across the website.
However, the most useful feature is the keyword section. Here you will find a list of keywords that the bot has found across the site separated into two self-explanatory columns; “In your site’s content” and “In external links to your site”. With this information you can check to see if any unexpected keywords are appearing in the results which may be a sign of something malicious happening on your site. By checking this list for expected keywords you can ensure that the bot is picking these up, if not then it could be an indication of a problem with the site preventing this keyword from appearing. Through using the other tools on offer, such as the “crawl errors” page or ensuring an up to date sitemap has been submitted, you’ll be able to locate the source of the problem.
Nick Price
SEO Programmer
