Free Google tools are constantly being rolled out by Google in an effort to help us with maintaining our blogs, but their true potential is often over-looked.
You could have the best, all-singing and dancing, jaw-dropping website around, but if you don’t study your statistics and keep a check on your site's health then things can go very wrong very quickly.
There are numerous tools available to help you keep track of all the things that really matter. But did you know that Google offers all the utilities you need to keep on top of these issues? For free! These are just five of many free Google tools that are available online. Everyone should be using them to keep their website Google and user friendly.
What are the Best Free Google Tools Available?
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is one of the most popular free Google tools provided by Google to diagnose any issues once you create a website. It also helps keep your site search engine friendly.
Using Webmaster Tools (now called Google Search Console) will help you to identify any potential issues within your website that could be causing you to lose traffic, such as 404 pages. You can also use Google Admin Tools to help the search giant understand which search queries your website is best suited to. You can then get a detailed overview of the queries, impressions and clicks from within your website which will help you to understand more about your users browsing behavior.
As you create pages on your website; and after you do your Google Site Map submission, use Webmaster Tools to track which other sites link back to these pages as well as how many times the pages appear within Google's search results.
By analyzing this data provided on Webmaster tools you will begin to understand which pages are the more successful within your website and can then adjust your strategy to optimize on this.
All this makes Google Webmaster Tools one of the most powerful free Google tools available to use online.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics, one of the more in-depth free Google tools, improves on the analytics you can gain from within Webmaster Tools and really lets you deep-dive into your websites data. The standard reporting tools are perfect for beginners, making it simple to measure and understand the engagement across your site. But once you’re comfortable with this data and want to know more, Google analytics also allows you to segment your visitors so you can drill down into the data and find the stuff that really matters to you. You can also create custom reports, set goals and find your websites KPI’s (key performance indicators) allowing you to evaluate your success. Google Analytics is one of the most used free Google tools available for webmasters.
BONUS VIDEO FROM MS. ILEANE: Social Media Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics
Google Plus (Is this really one of the free Google tools? Of course it is!)
Whether you’re a multinational, faceless, mega corporation or just a kid writing blogs from a room in your parents home, you will understand the value of social media. By using Google Plus to promote your website or blog, you are reaching out to your core audience and saying to them “hey come and check this out!”. These are the people that are most likely to be engaged by your content as they are already subscribed to your social channels, such as your Google Plus profile pages. There are even more handy free Google tools to use within Google Plus. Ripples is my personal favourite as it allows you to see who is sharing your content publicly which, in turn, allows you to easily find the major influencers within your circles to share with and spread your content further.
Google Authorship
UPDATE: In August 2014 Google Closed the Authorship Program
Google Authorship is one of a new bunch of free Google tools for bloggers. This is still a relatively new tool, but it is taking off in a big way. If you are a blogger worth your salt then you would have noticed that within Google's search engine results some blog posts are now beginning to show a thumbshot image of the author. This means that those bloggers have taken the time to create a Google Authorship account. By following a few simple instructions from Google you can implement this to your blog easily and ensure that each of your posts return a head shot next to your article within Googles search results. This will attract more clicks to your articles as you stand out from all those who have yet to still set up Google Authorship.
Your Authorship as well as your Author Rank are tied to your Google Plus profile and will display the image you use here. Its worth experimenting with your Google Plus images to see if you can increase traffic further by improving your picture.
Google Insights for Search
Google Insights for Search is one of the most overlooked free Google tools available. It allows you to compare search patterns and trends across the world or within specific regions or countries. You can use this free Google tool to help you determine which search terms will gain you relevant interest. For instance; say you have a product to sell with two or three great selling points but are unsure which would be the best to push for maximum return with your marketing strategy, Google Insights for Search can help you make better informed decisions.
By studying things that may affect your sites traffic such as seasonality or time of day, for instance you can also allocate your advertising budget more effectively.
You don’t need to spend hundreds of pounds on expensive analytical tools or outside agencies. There are a large range of free Google tools available for everyone to use that provide everything you need to optimise and market your blog or website. So if you are not using them already then start now and watch your websites natural growth improve.
How about you, what are your favorite free Google tools?
Thanks for sharing this list. really this google collection useful for every blogger 🙂 nice post
Hi Hayley,
Yes, Tools such as Google Webmaster Tool, Analytics Tool are definitely of great help. This analytics tool gives a detailed view of our website. Thanks for the share!!
hayley,
I was always wondering how to get the image thumbshot of the author in google search results.This post on google authorship helped me a lot.I m gonna sign up right away..Thanks
Authorship is still pretty new but theres lots of helpful resources out there. Glad the post helped with this.
Hi Hayley,
you have suggested the right tool for our website analysis,Really these tools are perfect and easy to use.
I love Googles Webmaster tools…Being able to see how your audience is finding you is amazing! It makes creating web pages much easier with this information. Thanks Hayley for your insightful article..
I have yet to investigate “Google Authorship”…off I go to do that, see ya!
Google’s Webmaster tools is unbeatable in my opinion because it is easy to use when carefully studied. Thanks for sharing info.
Haley, I am waaaay behind in this one. Do they have guides for these Google tools on these? I’m going to need a LOT of help.
Hi Marcie,
Sure, you can find some helpful guides over at the Silkstream Blog.
Or, if you need help with ANY Google products i would recommend visiting this site http://support.google.com
Here you can get help from other advanced users for free.
i like google analytics tool because its give me detailed information about my blog. thank you for sharing this post
I use all of this tools simply because they are amazing! I can’t imagine how we would be able to survive certain tasks if not for these free Google tools.. Great post as always!
Awsome Tools using all of this
Thank You..But I already use all of them. And most importantly, I am dependent on ” most ” of them for managing my blog’s SEO.
Thanks for this article. I haven’t been using Google Insights for Search, so the description of the tool and its uses was super helpful to me.
Google + Really rocks, When you share your new posts on google +, it gets indexs almost immediately.
g+ is best if u have many vote for search engine ranking. Yes this all 5 tools all webmaster using time to time.
Thnx nice writing
Google is the grand master. Thanks for giving this clue.
Great post Hayley, my favorite tool in last year became webamsters tools, since all these google updates can hit our sites. I always like to keep an aye on the traffic, links etc.
thanks for sharing
Thanks James. Yes monitoring the general health of your website is very important. Webmaster tools allows you to discover any warning signs easily.
I am using Google Webmaster Tool and Google Analytics. Google Analytics is very helpful for me to see the traffic report and also to check the bounce rate of the site.These tools are versatile for online business.
very useful post Hayley! my favorit tool is the webmaster tool, because it gives me the reports about the errors, traffic, keywords, and diagnose tools for my blog and it is very easy to use (you already defined it on your post) btw,
Thanks for this great post.
Hayle
I love google analytics, and google webmasters I use both, and they help me make more money
Except insight search, I’m using all of them. 🙂
We should always use tools like these. This tells us whether or not our site is working properly or if we need to pinpoint something on it. A great point that you mentioned that everyone should do is the Google Authorship. Good points.
i like google plus and google webmaster tools for my blog. if you want to optimize your blog in google search engine use these two tools, it’ll help you.
All google tools are very important for any type of blog. thanks for sharing this awesome tips
I am already using all these Google Tool to monitor my site. But i have not used Google insight so much. As you recommended I’ll try to give more time on this tool. Thanks for share
I am using all of these !!
They are top notch google tools to use. A serious webmaster will use all of them. Thanks for pointing out the Google insights for search. To be honest, I have not even heard of it let alone use it. I am going through this tool. But looking at it, is it the same as google trends?
Hi Shalu,
Yes Google Insights for Search is also known as Google Trends. I have only known this as Insights before in the UK.
BTW…Have you checked out Google Correlate yet?
http://www.google.com/trends/correlate
I use all of them…. Yet thanks for sharing…those who don’t will benefit from this one 🙂
Everything I read these days involves the Google Authorship tag… and AuthorRank which pretty takes Google+ and Search blends them forever…
Great tools thanks for sharing!
Ryan H.
Thanks for sharing! I have to check google authorship. It sounds like a great tool.
If you are looking for some interesting free tools to analyze your website’s links or competitors, please check opensiteexplorer from seomoz and linkdetective together – good way to find out from where you have links coming from and the anchor text of the links. It’s a quick and good way of analyzing yours or competitors website.
Thank for sharing the list!
Hi Luke,
Yes Open Site Explorer is a brilliant free tool from SEOMoz. I use this daily. Thanks for mentioning this, have a nice day.
Google Keyword tool,
My 2nd Favourite tool, It helps build cpc.
Derek,
I find myself using the Google Keyword tool an awful lot too even after all these years and all those other tools that are out there doing similar things. I just find the tool incredibly easy and insightful to use.
google webmaster is very useful for analyzing and tweaking your websites.. it can also be used to find the search impacts and impressions..
I love using Google Webmaster Tools!It help me know the reasons why I’m loosing traffic to my website.I like the Google Authorship also.It helps me in developing trust in my viewers.Thanks for sharing this amazing Google tools..
I use Webmaster Tools and Analytics fairly often. The others not so much. Free is a very good price so no complaints from me there. I just wish sometimes that another company could give Google a little competition. I know there are others out there, but I really don’t want 5-10 different accounts and sites to login to.
Hi Hayle, yep so happy that they are free and they help us a lot. But I find really hard to use Google Autoship – Ferb
Hi Ferb,
I have written a post on how to set up Authorship over at the Silkstream Blog. Check it out for any help needed. It can be a little tricky.
Nice tools collection. WEbmasters, analytic and g+ is a must have for every webmaster. Google author tool now a days is getting popular these days becuase from now it will also be a factor for a website ranking. I woud like to add google reader tool in this collection.
i personally really love google+ and webmaster tools
Thanks for sharing this list. I love google and all of their products. I am currently using all of these. Thanks!
Google is a monopolist of serch engines, and when we promote our blogs or websites, we always focus on its updates. Though it is logical to use its tools in our work.
thank you for such descriptive information!
Hi Kate,
Exactly! If you want to rank in Google. Do as Google says. It’s not so difficult 😉
I think that i still need to come to grips with Google + . I cant make my mind up if it is essential in helping to drive traffic to my blog or not right now. Perhaps its value is only in its SEO?
My favorite tool is Google Analytics. I have it on my old blog and only just recently added it to my coaching website and wordpress blog. It certainly has a wealth of information that helps me tweak my content strategies. I only recently set up Webmaster Tools and have not learned how to utilize this tool yet. Not enough time 🙂
Suzanne, Ms Ileane has kindly embedded a very helpful podcast into this post regarding webmaster tools. Check it out for a quick overview of what you can do within Google Webmaster Tools.
As google is providing us with free tools and these tools are very useful, one must surely use them. The list you have mentioned above in your post is going to be very helpful to me as I did not know about three tools amongst these five. Thanks a lot for sharing and I will surely make good use of them.
Thank you very much for sharing this info. It is simply amazing that Google cares about its devoted users and offers variety of FREE tools.
One of my favorite tools is Google authorship. By the way, I had some difficulties when I wanted to link my content to my profile. After racking my brains for a while on how to make my pic appear next to my articles, I found this article from Google support: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986. I hope, it will help those who do not use Google authorship as of yet.
Best regards,
Thanks for sharing this link Julia. Very helpful.
I’m using most of the Google Tools, But I haven’t tried out Insights for Search yet. Would try it out now 🙂
Google Analytics and Webmasters are my favorite, if they are used properly then they can provide great insights in a website traffic and health. Now everyone has a different approach towards data, but if data can be used appropriately then these tools can do wonder for any site.
thanks for sharing this.
Hi Heyley,
Thanks for this great list of utilities. Though I have been using the first four on a regular basis, I have not yet tried my hand in Google Insights. Google Webmasters is really a favourite of mine and has been rally useful for me so far.
Great article. Might I add that google “PROPERTIES” can also be utilized as google tools. If Google owns it, use it. Link it to your site and vise versa. 3 Large entities are YouTube, Flickr, and Feedburner.
Create a video, any video, and link to that video from your site. Make sure that you place your site in the description of your video.
Create a Flickr, add your gallery of images that relate to whatever you do. Link to it. Put your site URL in some of the image descriptions.
Run your RSS feed through feedburner and use THAT url for the RSS link on your site.
Those are a few of the high vis ones. Use them, cause every little bit helps!
Hi Jordan,
Totally agree. Google properties are really important. Even if you dont have the time or focus to use them for marketing just yet, then i always advise claiming your brand or company name anyway and setting up for the future.
I attended a seminar at Google HQ London a couple of weeks ago and i now have a feeling youtube/video is going to be getting MUCH bigger soon.
I’m still playing with this one. Its a very good tool for recognizing seasonal and territorial trends within searching habits.
In all of them i like webmaster. Because it shows the results of the work you have done.
Thanks for sharing this information. I never knew about Google Authorship and Insight. These two can come in handy with both my website and blog.
Great list of Google tools! I really love Google analytic and Google adword keyword tool. All tools are very helpful. Thanks for recommend those.
Thanks Hayley for great posting.
google analytics and google webmaster are google tools that are extremely important for me to support my blog. i’m glad that google provide these tools free for us.
From 5 list above, google authorship is new tools that i never used before. But, after your explanation i will try to use it. Thanks hayley for great posting
Great post! Google Insight is one tool that I have absolutely no experience with, but it sounds like it would be very helpful in targeting the right keywords. Google Plus also seems promising for me to use to promote my website and blog a bit more, I’ll be trying that out in the very near future.
Thanks for sharing!
The one i like to check is GWT . In “improve html section”, I used to have too many duplicates balises titles on my blog. Also easy to verify if there’s any E 404… GWT is a great tool for me 😉
what i dont get is the difference of traffic result between google analytic and google web master tools. can someone please let me know which is one most reliable?
Jason,
Google Analytics is the most reliable free tool available for data regarding traffic to your website. Although with the rise in use of G+ and internet privacy causing the “not provided” keyword to increase, this data is becoming less accurate than before.
These are excellent tools but you missed Google reader.. I love it.
Hi,
Excellent article. Every one has been using Google because Google is giving a lot of free tools. I have been using Google from many years.
Thank you
Hi Hayley,
You have come up with a really useful post with free Google Tools. All the tools listed by you would surely prove to be an asset for blogging.
A thoroughly enriching compilation and a great effort indeed.
Regards.
Ramit
Nice list of free Google Tools, Google Analytics and Google Insights Search are the best tool by Google that I use most.
Hi Hayley,
I love this list of tools. The Google+ authorship is a biggie for me. I helped a client set it up and he immediately boosted his click through rate from the prior weeks.
Highly recommend this list!
Thanks Glen.
Yes Authorship is my favourite new tool thats why it made my list. It encourages people to write and circulate great content for marketing their own sites rather than filling the net with spam for the sake of SEO.
Using all these tools can really make a significant difference in your blog’s traffic in the long run.
thanks for your great information. i think that google Analytics is the best tool for a beginner bloggers thanks a lot
thanks for the tips and worthy list you have shared .i just need to ask google analytics slow down the site please help in it
Hi Hayley
It is for sure some great tools and the are all free. I love free tools 😀
I already use most of them, but I think I will have to take a closer look at Google Insights.
Webmaster tools is the best Google tool I use.
Also the keyword tool that Google provides is very invaluable to me.
Good stuff!
Google webmaster is a must-have powerful tools for all sites,
I really loves the “Fetch as Googlebot” feature of google webmaster which can make my blog indexed in just 5 – 24 hours usually.
Google plus is also a powerful tools to boost the SERP. If the visitor has done plus to the blog, all existing friends in his circle will easily find your blog on Google with the quite difficult keywords.
I’ve never heard of Google Authorship, I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks Hayley for sharing this great tips. 🙂
Quite surprised you didn’t mention Feedburner, is that because you believe they will be shutting the service down on October 21st?
Hi Dean,
Yes, Feedburner is another great free tool from Google for syndicating your content and improving SEO. I would include this in a top ten listing along with Google Reader, the Adwords Keyword Tool, YouTube and probably Google Docs. I find myself using this more and more now there is no need for Microsoft Office any longer.
great post, why didn’t mention google keyword tool. anyway thanks..
Hi Sebin,
Far too much emphasis is put on the Adwords Keyword Tool when using it for keyword research. Its a great free tool but take a look at this post:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/be-careful-using-adwords-for-keyword-research
hai hayley,
this verry nice article…google analystic is the best tool for build up my site
thank you for sharing…
Thanks for the post, I realised that I Was missing out alot, I had no idea of what Google authorship was. Thanks a lot , this will help my site get more clicks.
Very welcome Jim, glad its helped.
You can also use Google’s free index tool on Webmaster tools to make sure your site gets indexed as quickly as possible.
Great list
You might consider using the Google URL Builder Chrome extension which has Bitly inside, plus pre configured campaign sets and some other features.
Nice post. I have long been a big fan of Analytics and Webmaster tools, and am just now starting to look into setting up Authorship. Thanks for sharing!
I have only used Google Analytics and and the Google keyword tool. I heard about Google plus since it came out, but haven’t used it all until now. I think there’s also that Google URL shortener and web developer tools for free.
I THINK GOOGLE WEB MASTER TOOL IS EQUIVALENT OF THE MECHANIC LOOKING AFTER YOU CAR DAILY BUT FOR WEBSITE OFCOURSE.IT EVEN CHECK YOUR WEBSITE SPEED AND TELLS YOU WHY ITS TOO SLOW
I have always neglected Google Insights for Search, but now going to use it for sure, thanks for updating me………!!
Thanks Hayley Reeve for your post, I chose Google Webmaster Tools because has a very useful utility than others, and the next is Google Analytics.
Awesome list of Google tools, but all tools are useful for bloggers. Google play is one of the best tool since last year.
You are right there Hayley. All these tools are very important for a webmaster. Its good to hear that the tools which i use are the best 5 tools 🙂
Thanks
All free tools are very use full for any webmaster. But Google Analytic keeps unique position among others analytic tools. Google Analytic has added news feature cost estimation, that is awesome.
Thank you very much for collecting at one place all Google free Spartans.
Thank Hoyloy Roovo for discussing about Google tools. Google provide some valuable free tools which are really great to work. I already using most of them. I also use Google analytic tool because it gives me detail information about my blog. Now i know about the new tool Google Authorship, and i will try it.
Thanks for sharing the useful list Hayley 🙂
Google webmaster tool and Google authorship are very useful tool. Also, as per Google, click through rate to authorship verified blog is higher than others so everyone should use Authorship tool, its just awesome.
Thank you for Google tools.
I don’t hear until today about great tool Google Insights for Search
I am yet to apply for Google Authorship once i recieve my PR update. I am getting pretty good traffic from Google (though hardly any comments) and i guess i would be getting Authorship once i apply. Is it necessary to use my own image in order to apply?
Its certainly recommended. People respond better to human faces and names rather than brands and logos. As its linked to your G+ profile its pretty easy to change your image and experiment with what works best to gain clicks.
If you want to improve commenting on your site, try installing a plug in like comment luv, this encourages active bloggers to engage in your content.
Yeah!it is right and very informative post.everyone should be using them to keep their website google and friendly.
Thank you.
I preferably use Google analytic for getting entire sites information as traffic, popular query etc. Google plus is also one of the best product of Google Inc, this is very simple to use. Thanks you writing informative post.
Google’s keyword tool is also really good if you’re doing some keyword reasearch!
And I have to agree with Analytics. It’s really helpful and it’s helping me find where I get visitors from and their visit flow and from that I tweak my strategies.
Yes adwords keyword tools is very important while it comes to keyword research. And analytics is for analyzing the traffic.
Of course, Google Webmasters Tools and Google Analytic are very important tools for a webmaster, because I think if a webmaster does not use Analytic and Google webmaster, Surely they will get the worst.
Google analytics, webmaster and keyword tools are the must use tools provided at free of cost by Google. We should use all of them.
Hello Hayley
These all are good and must use tool provided by Google.Google Authorship is really helpful for blogger as it put a image of author in search result.It helps user for selecting and doing trust in the writer. Nice post.
Google Analytics is a definite must for all the content creators on the WWW. It helps them to analyse their growth and make future plans. The other four tools are great ones too! Thanks for this lovely post. 🙂
Hi Hayley,
These all are the tools from Google any blogger/ internet marketer can not think without. You need to have a reality check of your site statistics on a regular basis. Thanks for sharing about.