Google Webmaster Tools adding a new feature to the “Fetch” function

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is working on improving their Googlebot tools, by adding a new feature. The revised Googlebot Webmaster tool, now includes a modified ‘Fetch’ feature. Before the change, the popular ‘Fetch’ feature used to show just an output of code, and the relevant HTML. With the new adjustment, Google is now able to show the user a visual representation of what the automated program itself sees. This is a surprising new development, and will help many Webmasters to get a clearer picture of the results they get from Googlebot.

In addition to showing what Googlebot sees, it also allows users to see errors, when Google is prevented from accessing particular resources. This means that you will get a detailed breakdown of what information Google was able to fetch, and render, and what it was not. The process now takes several minutes to complete, before it is able to provide you with a complete indicator. During the ‘crawl’ process, the program may show a partial rendering, as a result of blocked resources. Despite this, users are now able to get a full report on what the crawl’s results were.

The benefit from the new fetch and render button on ‘Fetch as Google’ is that you will have a complete website view of every aspect of your rendering. You can also obtain a device specific result based on the type of device you are interested in. There are options to specify the device type as desktop, smartphone, or other device. In addition, Google also recently announced that improved Java debugging tools are coming to Google Webmaster, to show how resources are being blocked, such as JavaScript, and CSS.