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Friday, June 20, 2008
As the days grow longer and summer takes full stage, many of us are flocking to patios and parks
to engage in the time-honored tradition of grilling food. When it comes to cooking outdoors, the
type of grills used span a spectrum from primitive to high tech. For some people a small campfire
is all that's required for the perfect outdoor dining experience. For other people the preferred
tool for outdoor cooking is a quad grill gas-powered stainless steel cooker with enough features
to make an
Iron Chef
rust with envy.
An interesting off-shoot of outdoor cooking techniques is solar cooking, which combines primitive
skills and modern ingenuity. At its most basic, solar cooking involves creating an "oven" that
is placed in the sun and passively cooks the food it contains. It is simple to get started with
solar cooking because a solar oven is something people can make themselves with inexpensive
materials and a bit of effort. The appeal of simplicity, inexpensiveness and the ability to
"do it yourself" has created a growing group of people who are making
solar ovens themselves.
How all this relates to webmasters is that the webmaster community is also made up of a diverse
group of people who use a variety of tools in a myriad of ways. Just like how within the outdoor
cooking community there's a contingent of people creating their own solar ovens, the webmaster
community has a subgroup of people creating and sharing their own tools. From our discussions
with webmasters, we've consistently heard requests to open Webmaster Tools for third-party
integration. The Webmaster Tools team has taken this request to heart and I'm happy to announce
that we're now releasing an API for Webmaster Tools. The supported features in the first version
of the Webmaster Tools API are the following:
Managing Sites
Retrieve a list of your sites in Webmaster Tools
Add your sites to Webmaster Tools
Verify your sites in Webmaster Tools
Remove your sites from Webmaster Tools
Working with Sitemaps
Retrieve a list of your submitted Sitemaps
Add Sitemaps to Webmaster Tools
Remove Sitemaps from Webmaster Tools
Although the current API offers a limited subset of all the functionality that Webmaster Tools
provides, this is only the beginning. Get started with the
Developer's Guide for the Webmaster Tools Data API
to begin working with the API.
Webmasters... fire up your custom tools and get cooking!
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["Google Webmaster Tools is releasing an API that allows third-party integration, enabling webmasters to create and share custom tools."],["The initial version of the API supports managing sites (adding, verifying, removing) and working with sitemaps (adding, removing, retrieving lists)."],["While the API's current functionality is limited, it's just the beginning, and further development is expected."],["The diversity of tools and approaches within the webmaster community is likened to the diverse methods used in outdoor cooking, from basic to high-tech."],["This announcement is presented in a lighthearted, summer-themed blog post, drawing an analogy between outdoor cooking and web development tools."]]],["The blog post discusses the release of an API for Webmaster Tools, enabling third-party integration. The API's initial version allows users to manage sites (add, remove, list, verify) and work with sitemaps (add, remove, list). This release is a response to webmaster requests for open integration, and it draws parallels between the diverse tool usage in outdoor cooking and webmaster communities, highlighting the growing trend of users creating their own tools.\n"]]
