A webmaster is a person responsible for maintaining one or more websites. Search engines also use the word for the audience of their documentation and tools. It describes a role and carries no protected job title.
Origin of the term
The role appeared in the early 1990s. RFC 2142, published in May 1997, lists WEBMASTER as the standard mailbox name for the HTTP service, with WWW as a synonym. That is why many sites still offer an address such as webmaster@example.com.
Early webmasters handled design, programming, content and server administration. According to Wikipedia, organizations have since moved from a single webmaster to teams with defined roles, such as developers, content managers and SEO specialists. TechTarget describes the same shift and links it to content management systems like WordPress.
Webmaster in search
Search engines address site owners as webmasters. Google’s former Webmaster Tools became Google Search Console in 2015, and the Google Webmasters blog and documentation became Google Search Central in November 2020. Microsoft keeps the term in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Example
A search engine reports that a page returns a server error. The person who runs the server or the CMS needs to fix it. In a small company this is often one person, in a large company a platform or development team.
FAQ
What are webmaster tools? The free services of search engines that show site owners how their pages are crawled, indexed and displayed. Google’s is called Search Console, Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools.
What are webmasters called now? There is no single successor term. Responsibilities are spread across roles such as web developer, content manager and SEO specialist.
Sources
- RFC 2142 – Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions (May 1997)rfc-editor.org
- Announcing Google Search Console – the new Webmaster Tools – Google Search Central Blog (2015)developers.google.com
- Webmaster – Wikipedia (secondary)en.wikipedia.org
- What is a webmaster? – TechTarget (29.04.2024, secondary)techtarget.com
- Goodbye Google Webmasters, hello Google Search Central – Google Search Central Blog, November 2020developers.google.com
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