softplus - 4:31 pm on Nov 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

You're right, they don't SHOW much YET. However, seeing how Google Sitemaps and Google Base are the first real two-way-interfaces between Joe-Webmaster and the search engines, who's to say that it will stop with statistics?

With a good validation / authentication system in place Google could add other things ... perhaps like a possibility of letting the webmaster change existing, indexed URLs (eg redirect bad URLs to the correct ones) or even allow him to directly remove single bad URLs (without the funny 180 day scheme now), perhaps allow the webmaster to specify other structured pieces of information (geographic targeting of URLs within a website, etc.). A good validation scheme, which any webmaster can comply with, is the first step to a good two-way communications between the two important parts of a good information retrieval system (clean, good indexing + good content). I wrote up some more about this on my blog, but I think I can't post the link (it's in my profile).

sorry about those links - didn't see that in the TOS; mods: feel free to remove them - I have no idea how to edit posts, perhaps I'm just overdue for the weekend :-)