Google Webmaster Tools Introduces “Labs”
Posted at 11:21am EST on 10/13/2009
Google Webmaster Central announced a new feature of Google Webmaster Tools: Labs.
So far, there are only two features available in Labs. “Fetch as Googlebot” which will do a couple of things. It will first see if Googlebot is even allowed to fetch the page. Then it will make sure it returns a 200 status code (which means everything is all good). Finally, it will let you click on “success” and then actually see exactly what Googlebot is seeing when it downloads your page.
The other feature available is “Malware details” which will let you know if Googlebot has detected any malware on your site.
“Webmaster Tools Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. They may change, break or disappear at any time.” So you can expect things to change, move, shift, and finally get figured out as they finish the code to either release it or remove it entirely.
A great release by the Webmaster Tools team.
Dataflurry
Nov 2nd, 2009
Neat, it sounds like it is very much in Beta mode, so I am excited to see how this unfolds.