Google Webmaster Tools Adds Structured Data Dashboard & CNAME Verification

Google-Webmaster-tools Google added two features to Google Webmaster Tools this week; a structured data dashboard and CNAME record verification.

Structured Data Dashboard

Structured data is a big part of Google’s search results and discovery process and to make it easier for webmasters to understand what structured data Google has indexed from your web site, Google introduced a new section under the “Optimization” section of Google Webmaster Tools named “Structured Data.”

Structured data will show you all the rich snippets markup and other structured data markups Google discovered for your site. Google breaks down the dashboard reporting by three levels including site level, itemtype level and page level.

On the site level Google aggregates data by root item type and vocabulary schema. Root item type means an item that is not an attribute of another on the same page.
On the itemtype level Google provides per-page details for each item type. Google will also provide specialized preview columns to show more item markup.
On the page level Google shows all attributes of every item type on the given page. Google also shows a link to the Rich Snippet testing tool for that specific page.

Here is a picture of the site level report:

CNAME Record Verification

Google has also added yet another way to verify your domain names with Google Webmaster Tools. The new way is to simply add a CNAME record to your DNS. Google said they added this method for those who “are not able to create DNS TXT records for their domains.” For step by step instructions on this, see Google’s blog.

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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http://xeeme.com/MikeMiguel/ Luis Miguel

The CNAME record on DNS is great, but comes late, YANDEX did it more than a year ago…
http://www.facebook.com/Aji.Issac Aji Issac Mathew

Now there is so much data that it becomes difficult to do an analysis without spending good time. More data is a welcome step and an opportunity for all of us.
Maurice Walshe

why adding stuff to your dns is way more complex than adding a single text file at the root of the webserver and adding extra crauft to a system designed for name resolution is a bad idea in my not so humble opinion
SEO_BERLIN

Thank you for the posting! Collegial greetings from Berlin.
Manuel – http://manuelstuerkat.de
http://www.blurbpoint.com/ Sanket Patel

Google will check for the CNAME record and if everything works we will
be added as a verified owner of the domain. Using this method
automatically verifies you as the owner of all websites on this domain but i think this method becomes quite complex because DNS TXT is more easier than it.
wladimirk

For some reason I thought this was already a part of their algorithm but it looks like a ranking improvement. Even this year I’ve stumbled upon sites which offer nothing of value but rank very high. Hope that this kind of update helps.