Google renames Sitemaps to Webmaster Tools

Google recently made changes to their Sitemaps section. They've added new features since Friday and renamed it.

August 8th, 2006 at 4:32am — Comments: (0) — By: Jonathan Danylko — Tags: Google

I've been using Google Sitemaps for a while and noticed something a little different on Saturday. Google made some changes to their Sitemaps section where you can use either a preferred domain or a non-preferred name.

For example, everyone has a "www.domainname.com", but not all of those links have a www in front of it, do they? Google Sitemaps has taken this into consideration and allow you to take your sitemap and relate it to another domain, primarily "domainname.com."

Another feature they added was a new parent site that assists the Sitemap tool called Webmaster Central. The site is geared towards not only sitemaps, but everything else a growing webmaster needs to raise a healthy web site and not "be evil." :-)

Most of the features listed on the site have been dispersed throughout Google. This just consolidates those features into one area, which is where I'll be spending most of my time.

Matt Cutts has even prepared a video describing the features of Google Webmaster Central.