Ok, so on the 15th of this week, I was doing an SEO teleconference screenshare with a client to conclude a two part SEO Clinic.  This day was all about link building (the previous day was a week earlier)… so imagine my surprise when I opened up Google Webmaster Tools to analyze their links in… a WHOLE NEW GUI for keywords!  I was taken aback briefly as I had to make heads or tails of what I was looking at LIVE in the conference! They took it in stride as I was scrambling a bit and explaining to them that when Google pushes out changes that there are NO notices or warnings… you just have to roll with it… I was a little surprised that there was no “Show the old interface” link any where to be found…  I eventually figured out what they were doing and I must say I really LIKE IT.  It is a merging of Google Webmaster Tools and a bit of Google Analytics.  The graphs and charts are nice, and finally showing the clients that their keywords will jump around a bit depending on blogging or different datacenters will influence this. Overall, hats off to Google for this big Google Webmaster Tools improvement!

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More data and charts in Top Search Queries.

Why would anybody EVER need to remove pages from their site from the Google Index? And why would this be beneficial?!? Isn’t everybody fighting like crazy to be IN the Google Index?!! Man, I can think of a LOT of reasons…  discontinuation of a product line, marketing change, branding change, internal company change, new division acquisition… just lots… and just like a bush, if you PROPERLY prune your site, it will grow MORE!

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: URL removal explained, Part I: URLs & directories.