Google Webmaster Central Now Known As Google Search Central

Nov 12, 2020 - 7:11 am 2 by
Filed Under Misc Google

Google Search Central

First it was known as Google Sitemaps, then Google Webmaster Central and now it is Google Search Central. Why? Well, the team and tools are not just focused on webmasters - the same reason Google Webmaster Tools changed its name to Google Search Console.

Google Sitemaps was in 2005, then in 2006, Google expanded the name to be called Google Webmaster Central. That name stuck for 14 years and now it has been changed to Google Search Central. I am just surprised it took so long, I honestly thought it would happen around the same time Google changed Google Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console in 2015. But no, it took five more years.

I covered the change happening in more detail on Search Engine Land - note a lot of the links 404 still or branding has not yet changed yet because well, you know how migrations go. Oh and you saw the new GoogleBot mascot, the spider robot.

Here are some quick bullet-points on what has changed:

  • New blog location
  • New overall home for Search Central
  • Search Console Help Center will contain only documentation related to using Search Console
  • Webmasters Help Community has been renamed to "Google Search Central Community"
  • Social channel names will change over time, such as @googlewmc now is gone and replaced by @googlesearchc and here is the new YouTube channel
  • Content is still being migrated to the new location

Here is a list of the bigger changes:

I assume some SEOs are going to be watching the migration and doing a case study on it? :P

GSC - Google Search Central or Google Search Console

The other issue is that we abbreviate Google Search Console as GSC, but this is also GSC with Google Search Central. We are doomed!

I think the name is a good one and it will take many of us a while to learn the new name...

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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