The first is called ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ as allows you to view the information that Googlebot retrieves when it visits ont of the pages on your site. This is what people, webmasters and SEO ‘experts’, are most likley to be interested in. At fist glance it appears to be just the source code of a page, and while yes it is, it does also contain the server headers that were detected, so you can use the two to determin if googlebot sees your page as you want it to.

The second feature is a Malware status page, this feature has been around for a while outside the webmaster tools, if you knew where to find it, and its a useful tool is your site does contain some dodgy code, its good to see this is now part of the webmaster tools and easier to find.
There is a good post on the Google Security Blog that can tell you more about Malware detection so rather than write about it myself, I’ll refer you to it.

At 3.30pm yesterday, anyone searching google for any kind of search term were prompted with a warning that the site may possible contain some “dodgy” software and may harm their computer. While it only lasted for 40 mins while their “rapid responce team” removed the affending item ( 40 mins to remove a ‘/’ not that quick if you as me ) it kind of asks the question, should we really place all our SEO eggs in Googles basket??

Now I admit I’m not a real fan of Google as the biggest hypocrites on the internet but they do what they do well so you have to give it to them, but we must remember that they aren’t the only search engine around and if something were to happen to google, e.g. their servers shut down again, those that only focus on google will be left in the cold.

Webmaster tools, analytics, adwords all great but remember both yahoo and micro*cough*soft*cough* (find it hard to say that) also have their own versions.

Anyway enough of me follow the links below to read and make your own minds up

• the register
• the times online
• the beeb