Under Diagnostics on the menu of Webmaster Tools there is a Web Crawl option which highlights errors the Googlebot has had in crawling the site. This includes 404 errors that the crawl has discovered. This week Google have added the ability to see which page Googlebot experienced the 404 error on.

This is a great improvement to the service, previously the list of 404 errors, although helpful left webmasters wondering where the broken link was situated on the website. So although an issue was identified it was difficult to see where the problem was on the site. With larger sites finding the broken link then became a problem. However now the 404 errors are shown with a new linked from column that enables you to see, either on a page by page basis or for all errors what page the broken link is on.

For the page by page listings just click on the entry under the "Linked From" column (1 pages or similar) and a popup window will appear with the pages that contain the broken link. If you wish to download all the errors on the site then you can select download all sources of errors for this site, which appears under the main table of errors.

When you download the errors on the site, you will get a spreadsheet which shows you the broken link, the page it comes from and the date the error was discovered.

This new development to Google Webmaster Tools will really help with the management of your website and ensuring that there are no crawl issues with Google.