Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 10:02 AM
If you use Webmaster Tools, you're probably familiar with verifying ownership of your sites. Simply add a specific meta tag or file to your site, click a button, and you're a verified owner. We've recently made a few small improvements to the process that we think will make it easier and more reliable for you.The first change is an improvement to the meta tag verification method. In the past, your verification meta tag was partially based on the email address of your Google Account. That meant that if you changed the email address in your account settings, your meta tags would also change (and you'd become unverified for any sites you had used the old tag on). We've created a new version of the verification meta tag which is unrelated to your email address. Once you verify with a new meta tag, you'll never become unverified by changing your email address.
We've also revamped the way we do verification by HTML file. Previously, if your website returned an HTTP status code other than 404 for non-existent URLs, you would be unable to use the file verification method. A properly configured web server will return 404 for non-existent URLs, but it turns out that a lot of sites have problems with this requirement. We've simplified the file verification process to eliminate the checks for non-existent URLs. Now, you just download the HTML file we provide and upload it to your site without modification. We'll check the contents of the file, and if they're correct, you're done.
We hope these changes will make verification a little bit more pleasant. If you've already verified using the old methods, don't worry! Your existing verifications will continue to work. These changes only affect new verifications.
Some websites and software have features that help you verify ownership by adding the meta tag or file for you. They may need to be updated to work with the new methods. For example, Google Sites doesn't currently handle the new meta tag verification method correctly. We're aware of that problem and are working to fix it as soon as we can. If you discover other services that have similar problems, please work with their maintainer to resolve the issue. We're sorry if this causes any inconvenience.
This is just the first of several improvements we're working on for website verification. To give you a heads up, in a future update, we'll begin showing the email addresses of all verified owners of a given site to the other verified owners of that site. We think this will make it much easier to manage sites with multiple verified owners. However, if you're using an email address you wouldn't want the other owners of your site to see, now might be a good time to change it!
59 comments:
Good stuff. I've been waiting to be able to use the file verification method more often.
I also like the idea of showing each "website owner's" email address from with the tools. I think this will help the real website owners notice when and SEO has forgotten to remove themselves.
Any plans to make the process selecting the www/non-www preference more seemless?
The way you currently have to register both www and non-www urls for a domain is a bit confusing.
I am facing a problem, please can someone help me. I run a blog:
http://next-world-war.blogspot.com
One of my links had some good hits from google until three days back. Then suddenly I stopped receiving hits. I depended on this page a lot for hits. Previously I thought that I had done something wrong and that was why my most visited page from Google on my link:
http://next-world-war.blogspot.com/2009/01/military-comparison-india-pakistan.html
dropped from google search. But on close examination I found on Webmaster Tools in Google that my page still ranks high in google but when I click on my shown links in Webmaster tools instead of my page, I am taken to this page:
http://militarystrat.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/military-comparison-india-pakistan-israel-and-iran/
which is a complete content copy of my page. Most probably this is the reason why my link was kicked out and now this fake link appears everywhere in Google for my key words. My article is original and you can see that from the post publishing date as well. I have sent website reconsideration request twice to google because first i thought broke some guideline, but then on finding the fake link, i have sent another request. I don't know how long it would take and if it would rectify the problem.
Please can someone help me rectify this problem so that my link comes up in search again rather than the copied link. I am losing hits every day. Thanks.
Something is amiss! I am attempting to verify norcalpartnersblog.com. When I download the file from:
1. Download this HTML verification file. [google6613d26d1590fbff.html]
What I get is: google7601494c17eb6d02.html. As you can see the names are different and it won't verify.
Looks like your changes need some tweaking to fix this bug!
I hope you fix it soon!
I am having the same issue as rfellows. Looks like a production bug!
Please add a way to include the HTML in a page tag that's not in the header. And/or work with LiveJournal to allow journals to have the verification without theme hackery.
We fixed the file download bug. R, Harry, you should be all set now.
Still waiting for this new feature to be production ready. Been trying to verify a client's site all day and still am receiving "incorrect content" for the, now correct, downloadable HTML file, much like when I edited the incorrect ones.
Pete, if you're still having problems, please post details on the forum. Thanks.
they can make it more easy and manageable by adding a XML file with multiple node of email address md5 hash or their webmaster code like publisher code in adsense.Any way Still the cahnges are welcomed
That's definitely good news. Some MVC frameworks which use URL rewrite "suck" all paths and if the file is non existent they will give a HTTP 200 code. That was a problem with the HTML file verification.
"However, if you're using an email address you wouldn't want the other owners of your site to see, now might be a good time to change it!"
FYI... I have tried to change this, and while I was able to change the email address, the old one will not delete from the system. Still shows, especially in Analytics which is a problem when I want to send out email reports to my clients. How do we effectively make this change?
Did not work today, GMT 5pm 2/10/09
HTML function seems not to Work with "Google Sites"
The Meta Tag issue seems to be known about.
So still no way to do it for Google Sites users yet. I hear a few successes but a lot of failures
Jay E
Q: Does this mean we'll need to eventually re-verify all of our already existing sites? Or are they grandfathered into the old system?
-TimK
P.S. PLEEZE say that they're grandfathered in.
Thanks for the update Google! The non 404 response code has definitely caused some extra hassle in the past with certain CMS systems.
@Ed Nailor, you should post this question to the Analytics Help Forum
Analytics Help Forum
@Tim King, yes they're grandfathered in.
Doesn't work with wordpress hosted blogs. Bad move requiring specific content as those using this type of system have all sorts of mark up in there, and have no way to get to the meta tags.
This should be addressed quickly.Don't want to disenfranchise thousands now do we?
Lovely ... spent way too much time trying to verify a google site ... the info that it doesn't work yet would be nice in webmaster tools ..save a lot of time and frustration
This change just broke verification for weebly hosted websites.
Can anyone tell me if this has anything to do with why I continue to get the the RED X ("We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines"). Google does not give any explanation of the error, so I resubmit sitemap countless times.
Sitemap validation sites say it is okay. Mine is a wordpress.com blog. I never had any problem until a few days ago.
gotta agree with L.R. Sexton...i have wordpress blog www.buy-phone-online.com and i have tried three times.i copied and pasted the google verification code as instructed but i get a 404 status.is google fixing this?? thanks Artie
not working today
2. Upload the file to http://kc-x.com/
3. Confirm successful upload by visiting http://kc-x.com/google52243e2e009de016.html in your browser.
this works but I can not Verify
no success with changes here - it's too tech-drenched for some of us - well a few of us. Been blogging here since 2005 yet your changes are pushing me out...the point?
My Google site was previously verified using a Meta tag verification. Recently I noticed that images from my site which had been showing up on Google Images search for a while, had now entirely disappeared. Someone suggested that this happens because Google regularly updates the system. However I also noticed that certain pages with images had never registered on Images search. I decided - probably wrongly - that it was something to do with the verification, and I changed it from Meta Tag to HTML file at Top Level. That didn't work although I tried it several times, and so I moved back to the Meta Tag system and now that doesn't work either. No matter how many times I try, it returns a 404 error message and NOT VERIFIED. Is there something wrong with the system?
Glad to see an easier method to verify site ownership. Unfortunately the verification file is not really an HTML file and cannot be modified, otherwise Google webmaster tools will no longer recognize it.
It would be nice if a regular HTML file with a meta tag that can be derived from the file name would be helpful, i.e
File /google123456.html must contain "google-site-verification: google95bd5d80d47e3640.html" as text somewhere (or [meta name="google-site-verification" content="google95bd5d80d47e3640.html" /])
I don't really like serving plain text files as text/html and keep track of which user is associated with which file separately.
I agree with Jude, I'm not a techie either. These changes are pushing me out because my wordpress blog hasn't been crawled or indexed in 9 days due to site map verification change.
The last time I resubmitted my previously verified sitemap (It was verified months ago), I got....
"You haven't yet verified this site: http:sitename.com. Verify now"
@Tricia: Whether or not you're able to verify your site has no effect on when/whether your site is crawled or indexed.
Not even a response to the hosted page issues with validation? Starting to get suspicious.
@L. R. Sexton: Well, right now the response is that you won't be able to verify currently if you can't meet the meta tag or HTML file requirements. The good news is that this won't affect your crawling or indexing. We're going to be looking into some of the common scenarios in which people are currently unable to verify and seeing in what ways we can open it up to hopefully allow more folks to verify successfully.
@Susan Moskwa. yes, I see that Google has finally indexed one of my now old posts from Oct 2, so obviously some sort of crawling and indexing continues despite my rejected wordpress sitemap. But I can't agree it has had no effect. Since the sitemap is rejected, indexing seems to have slowed down. My posts used to be indexed almost immediately.
When I do a Google blog search for an oft Googled key phrase related to my blog, the results are not fresh. A post that I did 9 days ago is in the #2 or #3 position and the other bloggers results are similarly out of date (Sept 27-28-29). Google's results for "relevancy" are definitely stale, whether this is related to the sitemap issue or not.
Yet my friend whose blog is on blogspot (Google)has his posts indexed fast as ever! something is fishy in Googleland...
I'm sorry Susan this is a HUGE effect for hosted blogs. And a cavalier attitude about it is a very unnerving thing to behold from Google.
What this is implying is that the blogs people have worked hard on creating on a hosted service other than blogger are secondary in Google's consideration,especially since blogger ( Google s property) has no problem with being validated.
Now I don't believe that's actually how any one at Google feels feels. but this is the implication.
"For example, Google Sites doesn't currently handle the new meta tag verification method correctly. We're aware of that problem and are working to fix it as soon as we can."
Is it "soon" yet?
>>> if your website returned an
>>> HTTP status code other than
>>> 404 for non-existent URLs,
>>> you would be unable to use
>>> the file verification method
Hehe! You've found a smart way to circumvent that ever-annoying 404/200 issue once and for all!
-luzie-
@Tricia: Correlation does not imply causation. I work for Google, and I can tell you point blank that whether or not you've verified a site in Webmaster Tools does not affect its crawling or indexing. If you happened to get crawled or indexed slower on the week that you also had trouble with verification, that would be a coincidence.
You can submit a Sitemap even without being verified: either by listing it in your robots.txt file, or via ping.
If you're not happy with the results for a particular query, feel free to click the 'Dissatisfied? Help us improve' link at the bottom of the page to send your feedback.
@L. R. Sexton: I'm sorry you feel that way. Our primary concern is security: we would rather err on the side of being too restrictive (which could prevent some site owners from verifying) rather than too permissive (which could allow someone to verify ownership of a site they don't really own). This doesn't mean that we view certain websites as second-class. As I said, we're looking at ways that we can allow even more folks to verify.
Susan,
"You must initially add your Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools using your Google Account. When your Sitemap changes, you can resubmit it to Google in one of two ways: "
If you cannot verify how can you submit the initial sitemap?
and if a site doesn't allow access to its html files,why would you think it would allow access to its robot text files?
Your comment that this doesn't effect crawling is erroneous, as I have first hand knowledge submitting site maps DOES increase the chance your pages get crawled.It's the reason they exist.
Don't think I am complaining for the sake of complaining. I'm not. But there are (guestimate) hundreds of thousands of people who rely on this type of blog set up, and they need to be addressed.
@LR Sexton
Re Google's change in site verification method which poses a problem for Wordpress blogs...
A WP support staffer wrote me that they're currently looking into a new solution and will contact me as soon as we have any news on this.
@L. R. Sexton: Thanks for the catch -- that part of our documentation is misleading (I'll get someone to fix it). You can initially submit, as well as resubmit, a Sitemap through either robots.txt, ping, or Webmaster Tools. You don't need to be a verified site owner in order to submit a Sitemap.
"Submitting Sitemaps DOES increase the chance your pages get crawled. It's the reason they exist."
Actually, they exist to help with discovery of URLs that crawlers might not otherwise know about. It's true that if we can't discover a URL, we can't crawl it; but once we've discovered a URL, we treat it in the same way that we treat URLs discovered through any other mechanism.
Thanks for clearing up the Site map confusion regarding submitting.
I believe that we are saying the same thing two different ways.
Thanks for your time with this
Uh, ok, that's cool, but how do you do it? You provided a screenshot of the verification page, but how do I get to in my account? That would have been helpful info to provide.
*Verification problem*
Why do owners of a Google Site have to search to find out that the problem is known to Google? This issue should be reported in the Google Site management page and in Google Webmaster.
And how will we know when the problem is fixed?
The many continuing issues with Google Sites signals that this is a second-rate service by Google - and that Google management is reluctant to handle it properly.
I'm having trouble verifying my site using html. Am on wordpress and when I try to upload the html file, it says that the file doesn't have the right content. What should I do?
site verification with the html code is a problem because without being able to add a sitemap prior to verifying,this is the message you'll get(" We've detected that your verification file returns a status of 404 in the header")
google needs to fix tha mess by letting site owners provide a sitemap prior to verification
@Homeless veteran You can always submit Sitemap files via HTTP ping or your robots.txt file as described in http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156184
The downside is that you don't get statistics until you are verified, but at least you can get them submitted like that until then.
Hello,
What if some hacker uploaded his own verification file like google632b582d8f3ebcf.html to my server and verified the website as his own? How can I discard that verification?
If you verify your sites site using META all you need to do is remove the space before the last /> in the code it gives you. I cant post the code i received below in full but you will get the idea.
I have been trying forever.
"google-site-verification" content="XWh87UjaE_jp9OC0_tCNhdKAAxhntVwZ-G06MdoyTAg" />"
About site verification I do not know how or were to the code on the blog
@Dennis: Remove the file and then reverify all owners of your site. Note, however, that if they hacked your site once they can probably hack it again unless you also clean up any security holes...
I have sites that have been verified for ages. But for the last 3 days, some of them are showing the "not verified" message. Clicking on the html page shows the verification file is still there.
The only difference I found is that the old verification file is a blank html page but the new one does have some code there. Should I upload the new verification code for all the sites?
I believe somewhere it says the new changes won't affect old sites...
I can not Verify my blog, http://mobileclinic.wordpress.com
help me
I am having my own domain and created site using wordpress. Thereafter I have submitted site to google and tried to verify the same through google webmaster. Followed the procedure of creating new page with google code. But google could not verified my site. How can I get it verified from google.
Nice information, I really appreciate the way you presented.Thanks for sharing..
http://www.w3cvalidation.net/
I cannot verify using the "cut and paste this metatag." My sites were verified in the past, but now they refuse to verify and I notice that the verification code has changed. Although I have updated my site's metatags (on all pages) Google does not see the new tags... It persists in seeing the old metatags that originally verified. What is going on? How do I get help? I spoke with my provider and they said I needed to get help from Google....
How can I do that?
I see questions here--but no useful answers...
@daria Please post your verification code and site URL here. That would greatly increase the chances of someone spotting the problem.
Hello,
I tried to verify my site using the DNS method which is not working and have set up analytics since then and want to change my method of verification but every time I try it wont let me.
Many thanks
hi friends,
my blog is http://hindisongssmusic.blogspot.com
i dont know how to add a meta content for google-site-verification..
i mean wht id should i write in meta content.. pls help..
Hi, I have quite a problem not being so technically equipped, with knowledge of developing a website. I started a blog called "Home-Based Business" with the URL http://www.rodzetent.blogspot.com and the e-mail address changed. I have since then started another blog which is supposed to be totally different with the Blog Name being "Rodney Spray Ministries" which I changed to "House of Mercy" but found that there was another called "House of Mercy - Bethesda girls" I then changed the name to "House of Mercy Ministries" with the URL changed to http://www.houseofmercyministries.blogspot.com which, when I enter this URL, the URL for http://www.rodzetent.bblogspot.com opens. To access my Ministry Blog, I have to open sign in and click on dashboard. I tried to verify the site but it keeps failing. I have copied and pasted the META Tag but it is the House of Mercy Blog as I cannot edit or access the dashboard for the rodzetent Blog, thus it always returns as "Verification Failed". What suggestions do you have for me? How can I get the two blogs to be verified seperately and what can I do to get the blog ranking higher? I had AdSense on the old e-mail address and would like to place AdSense ads on the 2nd blog as well? Could you help with some advice?
Thanks
rodzet
I am having 404 error message. I have gone over all the steps several times to no avail. I have a MrSite website and it's very easy to follow. What am I doing wrong?
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