Google Webmaster Tools has recently seen a few updates. Posted on the Google Webmaster Central blog yesterday, here is a summary of some of the changes.
The vast majority of users will not be affected by this, but now you can submit up to 2.5 billion URL’s with a single sitemap index using up to 50,000 child Sitemaps. (previously Google only supported 1,000 child Sitemaps.) This is rather interesting considering that back in 2000 Google had only 1 billion pages indexed. As of last year Google has more than 1 trillion URL’s indexed.
If you have multiple verified users, you can now see all the submitted sitemaps for your domain within any one account. A great addition to help you sync everything that is going on.
The indexed URL statistic within your Webmaster Tools account is now more accurate
And something that everyone can be happy about – Google has sped up their processing time, which will drastically reduce the wait between submission and seeing actual data within your Webmaster Tools dashboard.