After nearly 10 years of being known as Google Webmaster Tools the search giant has decided to rebrand one of its more popular web-based services: say hello to Google Search Console.
This change comes as a result of user feedback — only a select amount of users identify as “webmasters”, and Google wanted to establish a new name for Webmaster Tools that was more inclusive of its entire user base.
“It turns out that the traditional idea of the “webmaster” reflects only some of you. We have all kinds of Webmaster Tools fans: hobbyists, small business owners, SEO experts, marketers, programmers, designers, app developers, and, of course, webmasters as well… So, to make sure that our product includes everyone who cares about Search, we’ve decided to rebrand Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.
With this rebranding Google also hopes to attract new users to Search Console that may have otherwise not used the service due to not identifying as a webmaster.
Please note that this is a change in name only. As far was what I could derive from the announcement, no changes are being made to the actual functionality of the product. So there’s nothing new to learn, other than the fact that we’ll have to get used to calling it ‘Search Console’ after years of calling it ‘Webmaster Tools’.
This rebranding will be rolled out to all users over the coming weeks.