Tired of sitting patiently by, refreshing your server logs, while you wait for the Googlebot to show up at your site?
So is Google. That’s why they provide tools based on the GData API that allow site owners – especially those owners managing hundreds of sites – to submit content directly to Google, making indexing quicker, easier, and more efficient for both parties. And with the latest update to the Webmaster Tools API, site owners have gained even more control over Google’s interaction with their content.
Four new features have been added to the Webmaster Tools API, that allow users to better govern how Google indexes sites. Using the API, users can now control the crawling rate at which the Googlebot indexes sites, targeting sites to particular geographic locations, defining preferred domains to avoid splitting Google juice between links with “www” and without, and opting-in for placement in Google Image Search.
While at first blush, this may not seem like much, it’s a definite improvement over the limited functionality that was exposed when the API launched last June. At that time, the API provided a very limited set of functions, allowing users to add, retrieve, and verify submitted sites and sitemaps.
Though the new features appeal to site managers, enhanced control via the API has an attraction to another group as well: application developers. The more functionality that Google chooses to expose via the API, the more likely it is that developers will step in to build applications that leverage that functionality.
More information, code snippets, and a detailed reference guide for the latest release are available from the Webmaster Tools GData API page.
