Once upon a time, when the Web was young, it was quite okay for your company web presence to be highly inconsistent - in fact, it was almost a requirement.

Different rules were applied to web communications than those of the "Real World" where documents had to be proofread and almost 'signed in blood' before being released.

You would hear people say "It's only a website ... it doesn't really need to be accurate".

How things have changed - now the web is the central communications channel for most organisations, so everything has to be right first time, every time, all the time.

If you are a Web Editor, then you have probably noticed that if the above does not hold for your site, then your company's lawyers, HR team or even the Chief Exec are pretty soon going to find out.

This change in emphasis has led to some management problems for those of us charged with the responsibility of making sure everything is right. Because the web is now so much more important, there has to be so much more up there, and just keeping track of it all can be difficult.

And it's not just the accuracy of your company's information that counts. Web Editors have to deal with so much more these days - quality assurance requirements, keeping track of ever-growing numbers of third party links and feeds, and ever-moving goalposts in the way of compliance changes, to name but a few.

Today's websites have input from in-house staff and many and varied external suppliers, often spread across the world. Managers face the challenge of ensuring content from different sources is correct, consistent and up the organisation's standards.

Let's face it - without some kind of automatic auditing, controlling the web presence of a large organisation these days is virtually impossible.

Thankfully, the rough and ready tools we all used to monitor our websites have changed, vastly for the better. Testing that might have taken hours or days for a web team to undertake a few years ago can now be done in a very short time.

Enter Sitemorse, a machine-testing solution that started out as an easy way for web managers to find out the bits of their site that were not working. A decade on, and Sitemorse has grown with the web and has almost cornered the market in automated auditing.

Sitemorse may be known for its regular Index benchmarks of websites across the public and private sector, where the great and good find out whether their sites stand up to scrutiny . But behind the scenes the Sitemorse software has been constantly evolving to help clients turn 'Mission Impossible' into a piece of cake.

Now at Version 7, the latest Sitemorse software does far more than just keep track of broken links, accessibility or duff code on your site.

It will run more than 1,100 automated tests on your website(s), reading page content, reviewing templates and checking the underlying delivery infrastructure. This will produce valuable information on where your website exhibits vulnerabilities across five key areas - Accessibility, Search Engine optimisation (SEO), Quality, Performance and Compliance. And the software is delivered via internet so does not need any client setup or management.

Some of the tangible benefits experienced by our clients include:
• 62% reduction in hosting costs
• 98% reduction in maintenance costs
• 66% improvement in response times
• 71% increase in web analytics accuracy
• 44% improvement in home page performance
• 52% reduction in site launch lead times
• 67% improvement in natural search

Perhaps more important than the technical descriptors above - for Web Editors, at least - is the warm comfortable glow that goes with knowing that at last you can be sure that your website is once more under your control.

Sitemorse can even help with the more esoteric needs of web operators, inasmuch as the latest version of the software can assist you to look after your brand online.

For example, Sitemorse continuously checks your online presence - reviewing new content, whether generated internally, or provided by third party feeds - looking for breaches and alerting named individuals to the issues (right down to the line of code) to facilitate fast, accountable, efficient corrective action.

Basically, all this allows you to ensure your brand is being delivered online as it should be, and the experience of your web users is as good as it can be.

This can happen on a global basis - if you change your brand rules, for example, and part of your organisation doesn't follow your guidelines, Sitemorse will alert you quickly - by email or even SMS text alert. These alerts can be set up to mirror the importance of the content you are monitoring - you may want a check of your infrastructure every thirty seconds for example to ensure nothing is falling over on your servers. Other tests, such as regular audits, for example, can be done on a less frequent basis.

This role of acting as a round-the clock guardian of your web presence across the globe is one of the key features of the latest Sitemorse version.

Sitemorse users also benefit from the constant updating process the software goes through as a result of responding to changing web conditions. The Sitemorse development team are constantly innovating to ensure the product is cutting-edge. Here's a couple of examples:

• At the development stage of a website, it can be easy for any developer to lose sight of the bigger picture. Sitemorse provides a series of proven solutions to assist your developers at each and every stage in the site building process and hence build client confidence in the final result. Sitemorse CMS Integration (SCI) sits in your content management system; after you complete the page, we run our full suite of tests, checks and measures to verify your content is ready for the public. This includes checking that any email addresses and links are valid and work, and we can validate against specific brand rules and make you aware of any accessibility problems that exist on a new page.

• For many developers Sitemorse is becoming part of their standard set of tools. Sitemorse's Instant Snapshot feature unobtrusively yet handily resides on your bookmark toolbar so as soon as a change is made, clicking the button will yield an instant and helpful report.

• If you're not sure what's out there, the Sitemorse Discovery audit utilises 600 separate tests on each web page and will find errors as well as complete a site inventory that can be used for future site development. Equivalent testing would take a team of people months to do manually, potentially tying up precious time and manpower.

The requirement to move goalposts on web real estate often comes from outside the organisation: rules on accessibility for example are now enshrined in law and there's always the risk that failure to comply will result in litigation.

The latest legislative action to make webmasters scratch their heads came from the EU with a new law on 'cookies' , small bits of code residing on a server that remember website user choices. New privacy rules from the EU have caused confusion and are not clear, leading many users to wonder how they are going to even find out what information they keep currently, never mind change it.

Sitemorse users are using our unique online technology, to audit websites of any size - even those containing thousands of pages - in just a few hours, and generate a detailed report that tells you exactly which types of cookies you have, and where they are located. We can even locate Flash movies, so you can check for any use of Flash Cookies.

Ongoing, our technical team keeps a look-out for such external developments and aims to provide a solution built in to the tools our hundreds of clients are utilising daily.