Google Services for Websites

Google Webmaster Tools Successes

Goal: Help customers make their sites more search-friendly

Business Name: Go Daddy
Business Type: Domain name registrar and hosting provider
Title: Go Daddy integrates Google Webmaster Tools directly into its hosting solutions to make customers more successful on the web.
Case Study: Go Daddy: www.GoDaddy.com

Business

GoDaddy.com has a simple mission: to deliver products at competitive prices and provide first-class service in the process. The Go Daddy Group, Inc. has grown to manage more than 29 million domains. Go Daddy is lead by flagship company, GoDaddy.com, which is the world's largest registrar, the world's largest hostname provider and the world's second largest SSL Certificate provider. The company offers a complete product line, including comprehensive hosting solutions, Web site creation tools, SSL certificates, and e-commerce tools. "In addition to being the world's largest domain registrar, we provide a complete product line to fully support our customers, from Web site hosting and creation tools, to sales and marketing software," explains CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. "We're committed to helping our customers build and enhance their complete online presence."

Approach

With the goal of enabling customers to be more successful on the web, Go Daddy worked with Google to integrate Google Webmaster Tools directly into its hosting offerings.

Google Webmaster Tools provide Go Daddy’s customers with a way to make their sites more search-friendly. Customers simply use the custom-built Go Daddy account creation and sitemap editing tools to automatically create a Google-friendly sitemap. With a few clicks, the site is verified and submitted to Google. This provides information to Google “spiders,” helping them crawl more pages and discover new content faster.

The tools also show Go Daddy customers how Google views their sites, such as URLs Google had trouble crawling. This helps Go Daddy customers quickly diagnose and remedy problems. “Go Daddy knows firsthand how important it is to be found in Google’s search results. We wanted to help customers using our hosting solutions create sites that are more search engine friendly,” says Product Manager Stacey Christiansen. “By integrating Google Webmaster Tools into our core hosting plans and control panels we are giving customers a robust selection of website diagnostic and analytical tools at no additional charge while providing significant value to our feature rich hosting products””

Results

According to Justin Jilg, General Manager of Hosting and Servers at Go Daddy, integrating Google Webmaster Tools with Go Daddy’s hosting solutions took relatively little effort. “The integration with the Google Webmaster Tools APIs was quite fast,” he recalls. “It took a bit more time to add our own custom functionality, including the sitemap editing tool and automatic account creation. Overall, we were pleased by how quickly everything was implemented.”

Now Go Daddy customers can see how Google views their sites. Customers are equipped with actionable information on how to structure, design and configure their online presence. This allows the customer to make the site more relevant in the eyes of search engines.

According to Jilg, many Go Daddy customers were not previously aware tools existed to make their sites more visible to search engines. “Our integrated site verification process reduces the amount of time it takes to set up an account and helps customers get feedback from Google much faster,” says Christiansen. “Our customers have the added benefit of having their sites vetted by the most popular search engine in the world.”

Feedback from customers is pouring in, and Jilg notes that it is overwhelmingly positive. “This is really about two industry leaders working together to provide the best possible experience for Go Daddy’s customers,” says Jilg. “Google is the most prominent search engine on the planet. Go Daddy is the world’s largest domain registrar and a massive hosting provider. We are known for providing exceptional customer support. This is another example of how we stand by our customers and do everything we can to help them achieve their online goals.”

About Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools offers a free and easy way to make Web sites more Google-friendly by showing webmasters Google’s view of a site, detailed reports to help diagnose problems and also allows webmasters submit Sitemaps and share information with Google to help improve their site’s visibility. The suite also includes a free sitemap editing tool, which enables webmasters to automatically submit all their web pages to Google, and helps make their pages more crawler-friendly and receive detailed reports on their top Google search queries and crawl status. For more information, visit www.Google.com/Webmasters..