Let’s look at the Google Webmaster Tools is useful for:

“Webmaster Tools helps you see how your site is performing in our search results, troubleshoot potential problems, and build Google-friendly sites. Webmaster Tools is for anybody with a website – bloggers, online stores big and small, government and education sites. If you’re online, we can help.”

The main attributes to this tool comes from the Webmaster Tools page. In short, you can:

• see your site the way Google sees it
• see how Google crawls and indexes your site
• identify and diagnose possible problems on your site
• easily monitor external links (sites linking to you)
• easily monitor internal links on your site
• find out which Google search queries drive traffic to your site
• see exactly how users arrive to your site
• tell Google about your site pages with Sitemaps
• tell Google which pages are the most important and how often they change
• tell Google how you would like your URL’s to appear in the Google index
• drive more traffic to your site
• improve your site’s visibility in Google
• build a Google-friendly site
• identify potential issues with the content on your site
• remove old pages from Google’s search result

As you can see from the list above, it can be quite helpful and should be one of the tools site owners and webmaster should be utilizing.

Want it? Why not, it is totally FREE and you do not need to be a wizard to use this tool or to implement it.

To make the best of the great features Webmaster Tools has to offer, follow these URL’s to get instructions on how to activate and enable Webmaster Tools on your website.

1. Webmasters/Site owners Help
   • Getting started
   • Site verification
   • Tools
   • Links
   • Stats and diagnostics
2. Google Webmaster Central Blog

Most importantly, we needed to hear – from the horse’s mouth – what Stafford Masie had to say about the latest trends with regards to Google Maps, Google Gadget Ads, Google Mobile Search, YouTube and other Google features that will soon be available in South Africa.

As always it is difficult to make notes of everything being said, so here are the highlights from our notes taken from the presentation.

Stafford started off by giving a little history on Google and said that Google’s aim is to 1.) educate people about everything online and 2.) to assist wherever possible. So, as Google’s Country Manager, Masie and his team of experts want to bring the Global Google solutions to South Africa.

think maps.google.co.za
think youtube.co.za
think blogger.co.za
think faster, better broadband!

Yes! Google South Africa is involved in trying to improve broadband locally and promise that in 18 months time, South Africa will go from the most expensive (and slow) broadband to the cheapest and fastest broadband connections in the World. According to Masie, this is what he is most passionate and excited about, getting South Africa up to speed with the rest of the world when it comes to broadband connections. That got me excited and pretty much every person in the room, I am convinced about that!

Hopefully low broadband costs will account for up to, and over, 20% penetration of the South African population.

Before I get into more detail about the future local Google services, here are some statistical information that Stafford mentioned regarding Google stats for both South Africa and international:

• 13% of total internet traffic in South Africa during the 4th Quarter of 2007 was spent on YouTube
• A 708% growth was recorded in this quarter
• Gmail is the leading free email service
• 90% of people use Google as their preferred Search Engine

In light of the above, Stafford addressed marketers and digital agencies and mentioned two very important points:

1. End user generated content or end user content generation
• YouTube provides 8000 minutes of video which is published worldwide per minute
• 84% of all internet activity is about people publishing content
• The internet today is not about taking, it is all about giving, sharing and participating
• Everyone is encouraged to experiment and engage!
2. Moment of relevance
• Knowing when someone wants something at the right time and to present them with what they want
• Google is #1 in mobile internet share and “click to sms” to come via ads which will deliver targeted ads when asked for
• Above 60% CTR in online video ads, again with the end user in mind, served at the right time
• Refining Search Engine Result Pages with Google Co-op – giving the user more than what they asked for

Stafford stressed again that online should never be ignored and that both the above mentioned points are crucial for everyone, especially marketers and digital agencies.

Finally, and in very short time, Stafford highlighted the exciting things to come from Google in South Africa and also services that we can make use of:

• Google Maps will be the biggest thing happening in a very short time with the local maps.google.co.za – Exciting developments in Maps such as virtual billboards on street view level and updated map gadgets.
• Mobile search will soon allow click to SMS on inline ads
• As faster and cheaper broadband will be available in South Africa, more people will be online, greater target markets and audiences.
• Google co-op is a new service allowing for refined search within search results
• YouTube channels is a unique way of making use of user generated content when users are provided with a platform or medium
• Syndicated search should be utilized more

Ok, so in a nutshell, that highlights Stafford Masie’s presentation on Google South Africa. Feedback that longtail received from many attendees was that it was informative and eye-opening. People loved Stafford’s enthusiasm and vision to educate and help wherever possible.

Be sure that longtail endeavors to provide further updates to many of the above mentioned solutions and also future events, so keep on “watching this space”.