An ashtray on a motorbike imo. I checked about 15 of the apparent search terms I rank for and none are there. What is your opinion of this "tool"? Thanks
Last week it was showing weird results for me too...But this week things seem to be somewhat better for me...
I've just switched a huge site to a new host and Google webmaster tools has been really handy in letting me know where I'm getting 404 errors, any issues in my sitemap etc. Setting the geo location has also been useful, defining the crawl rate has been used in the past and some of the links & advice have been extremely helpful. Diagnostics has highlighted the inadequacies of a CMS on another site and allowed me to develop custom solutions to avoid dupe meta data so, all in all, I've found Google's Webmaster Tools to be rather handy. It's just one of the tools in my arsenal so in your specific case I'd simply ignore any odd data and use something more accurate
If you download the file that's at "download all query stats" on the statistics page, you'll get a huge file that tells you the different regional googles (i.e .com .dr etc etc) that is generating those terms, which might help you make more sense of it.
I think google webmaster tools is a great resource, I rely on it to keep track of my progress in the serps.
You may be ranking for those terms in other geographic based search areas. For example the search results can be very different between searches done on google uk to one with google in the usa.
I find it useless as well, and I really don't trust Google much anymore so I have taken all of my sites off of webmaster/tools and off of /analytics, because I think google just uses the information against you in the long run Google tools like analytics are basically spyware that gives google too much information I refuse to run it anymore
I thought that, I'm still deliberating whether it holds truth. GWT is good for finding errors - i've just had a programmer fix site navigation as it was displaying a lot of errors in GWT for dupe content or dupe meta des. So I will see how it goes.
I've always liked GWT and many of the features it offers, but most of the information is typically updated infrequently.
There's not enough to do with it all. You'd expect Google to have more tools etc for you to add to your website to make it better optimized. I realize Analytics can provide that, but webmaster tools should do what it says on the tin.
Highwayman, whilst I see your angle, I think there's enough in GWT to keep your "average" webmaster happy and for those dealing with big site transitions there's always enough to do with GWT like ensuring paths are correct etc. When a site doesn't need so much babysitting then GWT becomes a monitor to simply show you that you're doing OK. Were GWT to become a full suite of webmaster tools then what else would we expect to be in there? Integrate Analytics? Add the AdWords Traffic Estimator and sandox? What about a keyword density & prominence analyser? Or how about a keyword ranking monitor? For now I'm quite happy with seperate tools - some multitools/suites are just a bit too bulky
I never use it because I think it is too much like spyware, but one feature that would make me use it in a few rare situations would be if they were able to inform us if there is any kind of penalty of any type on a site.
However they may use the info they gather, you WANT google to "spy" on you as much as possible. The truth is they are already spying on you and with these tools you can get some info on what they have on you which is often useful and is a whole lot better than being completely in the dark here. Think of this as your spy spying on the spying they are doing on you and giving you a chance to change some things that need changing in their eyes. Ken