From time to time, I will come across this post of someone doing something shady, or whatever it maybe, and people will say "dont use webmaster tools..." Why is that? Do you feel that your site is out of reach from google just because you do not use webmaster tools? Do you sleep better at night not being able to see a general over-view of your sites performance? Google compiles data for a living...for the world of me, I can not figure out why they think just because they wont use tools, then google will not know what they are doing. Do you think you are slowing google down by not using tools? What do you guys think... I am just baffled...
The data collected in google webmaster tools is collected by google nevertheless, so there is really no downside to add your site in webmaster tools. Analytics on the other hand, who knows, if you are doing shady stuff installing a snippet of code from google is basically spoon-feeding google data.
People doing black hat stuff avoid using webmaster tool bcoz google gets all the data of website and penalise the website doing black hat stuff. Otherwise webmaster tool is a very useful tool if someone knows how to use it.
There is no problme in using webmaster tools, coz it has collected all the data what google has collected. But analytics, stay away from it if you want to. It know where your visitors are coming from, it calculates the BOUNCE RATE if you bounce rate is high then you know what is the rank of your website
Google can penalize black hat sites with or without webmaster tools. Analytics should be also used unless you have some crappy site where all the visitors just run away.
Those who try to manipulate Google's search results aren't smart enough to know that avoiding GWT and analytics makes no difference.
I have always used Webmaster tools & Analytics and found the information useful & helpful. Then again, I keep everything above board. Mark.