Google provide some excellent website tools. And even better, they are totally free.

I’ve been using two of them for some time now on my current site: Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.

The webmaster tools are invaluable for helping to highlight orphan / dead urls within your site e.g. for those occasions where you once thought a particular page was a great idea, created lots of internal links to it and then later deleted the page from your site.

And I have now discovered a new feature in the tools – (ok, maybe its been there for a while and I’m slow on the uptake).

They provide a section called Content Analysis. In particular, it lists the pages in your site that have duplicate short and long meta descriptions. Very handy as I update the meta data on my new site pages.

Google Analytics has always provided more information about my site than I think I will ever need to use. But in checking for the tracking code to use on my new site, I noticed that they have updated it.

Its hidden in the depths of their app and wasn’t easy to find (you can locate it under Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Tracking Code). But in there they provide a new tracking code called ga.js.

This is Google’s explanation about this new code:

Use this tracking code to gain access to a wide range of exciting new features as they become available.

I’m not sure how long its been there – and whether the “new features” are actually available now but I was pleased to have discovered it: another thing to add to my new site.