According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of the word "webmaster" was in 1993. However, the term is becoming archaic, and according to data found in books, its use is in sharp decline. A user experience study conducted by Google revealed that very few web professionals identify themselves as webmasters anymore.
In an effort to focus more on the topic of Google Search, Google is changing its name from "Google Webmasters Central" to "Google Search Central", both on its websites and on social media. The goal is still the same; help people improve the visibility of their website on Google Search.The change will happen on most platforms in the next couple days.
To help people learn how to improve their website's visibility on Google Search, the company is consolidating their help documentation and blogs to one site. The Search Console Help Center will contain only information related to using Search Console. The forum will be renamed from "Webmasters Help Community" to "Google Search Central Community". The move will happen over the next few days and will include content related to how Google Search works, crawling and indexing, Search guidelines, and other topics. This information is currently located on the company's new site.
The Google Search team is consolidating its blogs onto one platform for better discovery of related content, easier language switching, and more consistent formatting. All archived and new blog posts will appear on developers.google.com/search/blog, with current RSS and email subscribers being automatically redirected to the new URL.
In addition, the Googlebot mascot is getting a refresh, with a new sidekick joining Googlebot in crawling the internet. You can see the updated Googlebot logo on the Google Developers blog.
Introducing the new Googlebot mascot! This curious critter has been seen jumping great distances and seems to be able to see best when surrounded by green light. Googlebot has been trying out new nicknames for the little spider bot, but they haven’t settled on anything yet. If you have any questions or comments, you can find the Google Search Central team on Twitter or in their Help Community.