8 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Google Webmaster Tools Like the Plague
Almost a year ago, I wrote about 9 Reasons Why You Need Google’s Webmaster Tools. After looking over the post, I soon realized that while it speaks to all that is fantastic about Webmaster Tools, it’s very out-of-date due to the most recent design revamp.
As such, I thought I’d redesign my original post. But what fun is a revamp if everything is the same? That said, here are 8 reasons why you probably should just steer clear of Google Webmaster Tools:
1. It’s so damn difficult to install.
You have the choice of adding either a meta-tag or an HTML file to your website. Bam. Can you think of anything closer to rocket science? A client of mine once installed it while we were talking at a meeting; it wasted all of 30 seconds.
2. How will you ever know if something’s wrong with your site?
Sneaky, sneaky Google. Those guys sit in their ivory tower and laugh as unforeseen 404s and inexplicable robots.txt files overcrowd our websites. Wouldn’t an interface that actually showed you these things be nice?
3. If it’s not on my smart phone, it doesn’t exist. 
Does my website come up on iPhones, Blackberrys, and countless other mobile devices? Who knows – guess I’ll have to check every page by hand (or touch, rather) on my iPhone, thanks.
4. SEO assistance
Non-SEOs rumor that Google’s out to get all of us SEOs and SEMs. Well, maybe they’re right! It’d be nice if they gave us some sort of optimization direction, would it not?
5. Top Search Queries
Why would I want to know how people are finding me? “Organic impressions”? Whoever heard of such a thing?
6. Anchor text
Fantastic. I get to see what other people use in hyperlinks to my website. What, like that matters?
7. Pages with External Links
I’d actually rather not know who’s linking to me. I’d rather just guess.
8. Remove a URL
Page no longer in existence and 301 isn’t an option? You may get rid of it, but Google still sees it. What gives?
Google Webmaster Tools won’t change your life, but it will give you some really great statistics and let you know what’s wrong (if anything) with your website. While you’re at it, make sure you don’t use Google Analytics either.
November 25th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nicki Hicks, Hall Web Services. Hall Web Services said: RT @nickihicks: A snarky start to the holiday: 8 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Google Webmaster Tools Like the Plague http://bit.ly/8lek5O [...]
November 25th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
[...] The rest is here: 8 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Google Webmaster Tools Like the … [...]
November 25th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
[...] original here: 8 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Google Webmaster Tools Like the … By admin | category: webmaster tool, webmaster tools | tags: looking-over, over-the-post, [...]
November 27th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Hah! Nice idea for an interesting post title, definitely got my attention.
You could also write about how much webmaster tools changed over the last year (since you wrote that last blog post).
December 1st, 2009 at 1:28 pm
[...] 8 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Google Webmaster Tools Like the … [...]
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:23 pm
[...] Don’t be afraid to be a little sarcastic. [...]
March 10th, 2010 at 11:35 am
[...] led me to write this sarcastic sister post about Google Webmaster Tools. Writing several guest blogs led me to writing this post. See the snowball [...]