Google Inside

Google Webmaster Tools are very useful and important to help determine how Google is indexing and seeing your website. One tool in particular is the “what Googlebot sees” tool. I wrote this article late last year on “Can Googlebot See You?” if you want some more in depth analysis about Googlebot.

Here is a small quote from the Webmaster Tools page which Google is using as a description about “How do I use this data?”

These statistics show you how Googlebot sees your site. Each listed word or phrase is the anchor text of a link to your site. This information provides good insight into how your site is seen by others. Anchor text gives Google additional information about your site, so if it’s not descriptive or useful (for example, the link in the text “Click here” provides no data to Google), you might want to work with the owners of those sites to update it.

Emphasis added added by myself.

Here is a quick screenshot of what Googlebot sees about this website.

So how does this help my search analysis and search marketing? It tells me how people are linking to my site. Maybe I need to add a “link to this page” box with certain anchor text, recommending to people to use a certain keyword.

Google specifically suggests that you “work with the owners of those sites to update it” to something that may be more relevant for you.

Anchor text is important, there has never been a doubt about that. So the next time you link up to a website, be careful how you’re linking to them to make sure you give the optimal link juice and value to that website!

Shameless Plug: On that note, if you’re looking at linking to this website, Google Inside, please use the anchor text “google news” so that way I will appear higher in the search rankings when you search for “google news” on Google.