‘Fetch as Google Bot’ is a remarkable feature of Google. It can allow you to see your web page the way Google sees. And, there comes bundle of features. It is known fact that ‘Fetch as Google bot’ feature can let your web page indexed quickly. Many webmasters are using this tool just for this sake – to quickly index new web content. There is no harm in doing that, but following are some of other important things you can do with this feature.
1. Hacked Website: You have just opened your website, say a finance niche, and find everything right. All of your content is there as you wish. Good. Your website is safe. Now you typed ‘weight loss program’ in Google and here we go. You are surprised as you see your finance website in the search result. How is it possible? Nothing seems to be wrong with your website when accessed directly. This is one of the common hacking techniques applied by unethical coders.
They somehow inject spam words and links in your website. When you access the website directly there seems to be no problem. But, when a search engine crawler accesses that it sees those words and links and indexed them. It is quite tough to diagnose. Fortunately you can get help of ‘Fetch as Google bot’ to find the problem and take steps. Just go to Google Webmaster Tools and click Fetch as Google Bot. Now enter one of the URLs of your website and submit for Fetch.
You will find the page as the crawler has seen there. Now closely see the contents and find whether it is hacked. You can also take the support of SEO professionals who are well aware of technical working of websites to diagnose the problem. If you don’t want to invest in that, get any cheap SEO packages containing the complete analysis of your website. They will do this through Google webmaster tools for you.
2. Crawl Errors: Search Engine is the best hope for the success of your online business. But, search engine can show only those web pages which are indexed into its algorithm. You need to constantly watch any possible crawl error in your website. Here again you can take the help of ‘Fetch as Google Bot’ to understand and find any crawl errors in your website. Once initiated this feature sends Google Bot to your website and hence can report any crawl error instantly.
3. Submit to Index: As mentioned above, it is one of the most popular uses of Fetch as Google Bot. Open an account at Webmaster Tools and verify your website there. Once done you can submit your webpages for indexing. It can take up to six hours for Google to index your web page if you use this feature. Moreover, you can submit 500 independent URLs in one week for indexing through single Webmaster Tool account and 10 URLs and other pages linked to that. That’s sufficient for majority of website.
4. Finding Unlawful Content: This tool can also help you to find some contents that are tough to index. For example, you have created a rich media page and used this tool. You can find that very little content is there that can indicate the problem Google Bot is facing with your content. You can remove or modify content to make it align with what is required by Google.
This is indeed a great feature. Just see the page returned by the tool after ‘submitting for index’ and you will be surprised to find lots of new information about your own website. It is definitely worth considering in making your website SEO friendly. There are many good web designing companies like Serpholic.com that use this feature to constantly tweak the coding and create websites that are loved by Google and other search engine.