Google Will Rebrand Webmaster Tools in Coming Weeks
Google will be rebranding its Webmaster Tools suite as Google Search Console in the coming weeks, according to a blog post published by the search engine giant on Wednesday. A simple name change, the rebrand will not affect any of the features or functionality of the original platform.
Webmaster Tools is a free website insight suite that was first made available almost a decade ago. Since its release, webmasters have used the platform's tools to submit sitemaps, discover broken links and indexing problems, identify strong keywords for site content, and many other processes that are considered indispensable by the search engine marketing community.
Google's Michael Fink noted in his blog post that the decision to rebrand Webmaster Tools was reached after studies of user habits concluded that the product is used by more than just those with "Webmaster" titles.
It turns out that the traditional idea of the "webmaster" reflects only some of you. We have all kinds of Webmaster Tools fans: hobbyists, small business owners, SEO experts, marketers, programmers, designers, app developers, and, of course, webmasters as well. What you all share is a desire to make your work available online, and to make it findable through Google Search. So, to make sure that our product includes everyone who cares about Search, we've decided to rebrand Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.
Fink noted in his closing paragraph that Google hopes the name change will encourage more people to user this powerful line of website analysis tools.
Photo Credit: Google Reporting Pages Indexed by Danny Sullivan via Flickr | CC BY 2.0