The list includes Dropbox, Scribd, WePay, OMGPOP, Loopt, and Weebly, but a lot of sites are missing out on potentially useful information--only 18% of 136 sites were detected as signed up with webmaster tools.
The list includes Dropbox, Scribd, WePay, OMGPOP, Loopt, and Weebly, but a lot of sites are missing out on potentially useful information--only 18% of 136 sites were detected as signed up with webmaster tools.
From what I understand GA isn't showing search keywords now for users that are logged into their Google account (totally frustrating change as more of your users seem to be logged in now). Webmaster tools does kind of show this information but without any of the neat metrics that go along with a GA report.
I've also heard horror stories. There was an article (or possibly just a commenter) on here not too long ago that was describing how their position on the SERPs dropped dramatically just a week after signing up for webmaster tools. That kind of thing sticks with you, even if it's not true (and I do suspect there were other variables involved that he wasn't telling us).
So, it's not all about whether someone is savvy or not. ;)
Edit: Almost forgot! A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site. I'd forgotten how awesome that is.
You can get the same information by simply googling for "link:example.com" (of course with your domain instead of example.com).
And you might think you have done your canonical right - but I have seen some horrible mistakes made with the canonical tag.
For keywords, Google Analytics shows:
- Visits
- Pages/Visit
- Avg. Visit Duration
- % New Visits
- Bounce Rate
Google Webmaster Tools: - Impressions
- Clicks
- CTR
- Avg. position (SERP)
To me, the Google Webmaster Tools information is more actionable. I have a number of different pages optimized or certain key phrases. I can look at keyword rankings and prioritize SEO. I can spot high impression keywords that I don't have a targeted page for, and create one. I can look at the CTR and see which page descriptions could be tweaked to get a higher CTR. The GA information is interesting, but ultimately not as useful for my needs.Lots of people use the meta tag method though.
The site won't show those that aren't doing non-meta ways so I suspect the actual registration would be higher than this. Although you can see the actual trending at http://trends.builtwith.com/Web-Master/Google-Webmaster