Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 4:47 PM
Webmaster Level: AllEverything is more fun with a friend! We've just added a feature to Webmaster Tools Site Verification to make it easier to share verified ownership of your websites.
In the past, if more than one person needed to be a verified owner of a website, they each had to go through the meta tag or HTML file verification process. That works fine for some situations, but for others it can be challenging. For example, what if you have twenty people who need to be verified owners of your site? Adding twenty meta tags or HTML files could be pretty time consuming. Our new verification delegation feature makes adding new verified owners a snap.
Once you're a verified owner of a website, you can view the Verification Details page (linked from Webmaster Tools or the Verification home page). That page will show you information about the site as well as a list of any other verified owners. At the bottom of the list of owners, you'll now see a button labeled "Add a user...". Click that, enter the user's email address, and that person will instantly become a verified owner for the site! You can remove that ownership at any time by clicking the "Unverify" link next to the person's email address on the Details page.
There are a few important things to keep in mind as you use this feature. First, each site must always have at least one owner who has verified directly (via meta tag or HTML file). If all of the directly verified owners become unverified, the delegated owners may also become unverified. Second, you can only delegate ownership to people with Google Accounts. Finally, remember that anyone you delegate ownership to will have exactly the same access you have. They can delegate to more people, submit URL Removal requests and manage Sitelinks in Webmaster Tools, etc. Only delegate ownership to people you trust!
We hope this makes things a little easier for those of you who need more than one person to be a verified owner of your site. As always, please visit the Webmaster Help Forum if you have any questions.
63 comments:
Great News! It's been a while coming mind ;-)
This is a great convenience, but Webmaster Tools desperately needs the ability to delegate to a user with restricted permissions, the same way Google Analytics does.
Many site owners want to be able to allow agencies/SEO's access to the data but emphatically DO NOT want them to be able to change any settings.
Any possibility this is in the works?
Thanks for a nice convenience-option; really handy.
But as you note, we might want to add a user with lesser privileges - not the same rights as the delegating user...
Workable?
@fynali (on twitter)
Cool Information.. I am Happy with this information
I completely agree with Paul T on this one.
Great for multiple site "owners" but very dangerous for 3rd parties that just need data.
this is great news, can remove all those horrid verification pages clogging up my root folder.
Ability to restrict additional users access would be very useful, one for the feature request list please
Seems like a feature that has been long overdue. Glad to see it live.
I agree - long overdue and VERY appreciated. Too often I do the verification on behalf of my clients. Now they can do it and add me. Thank you so very much!
Glad to see this live but I have some bad news, I am having trouble making it work on accounts where it was registered with a private email and then a gmail address has taken priority. In this case I have to specify the original email in verification but when the new user signs in they don't have access (likely because it's under their gmail account and therefore a different email).
I tried adding a UK googlemail account and it said:
"We could not find a Google Account for accountname@googlemail.com"
Is this a similar bug to what is restricting additional googlemail users in Analytics?
That's a wonderful feature. Google always try to make things simple.
Love Google.
Thanks
Sankar Datti
@wb: That looks like an issue, thanks for bringing it up! Sorry about the inconvenience.
A great addition to the webmaster resources, but I hope you can sort out this email account problem as I'm suffereing it as well!
great news. But i am also agreed with Paul T. what about the permissions like Google Analytics?
Finally!
Thanks Google really great news but yes we are also suffering from the same error message "We could not find a Google Account for example@googlemail.com"
ALELUIA!!!
Awesome. This will make it easier, especially working with clients or big clients.
Amazing. But maybe it can be better to monitor rights like in Google analytics
That's awsome! No more struggling with multiple verifications and multiple lines of codes in the source code!
Try adding example@gmail.com instead of example@googlemail.com. Same applies to adding accounts to Google Analytics.
Totally agree with the comments here - it's a great new feature. We waste a lot of time waiting for clients' IT departments to add on the meta tag for verification, it will be far simpler if a marketing person can simply grant us access.
Also agree with the different types of access idea - that has proven very useful within analytics.
What happens when someone should no longer have authority? In a real world, authority structures change. Would a prev authorized individual from then on have the ability to to do malicious things to your indexing?
Awesome; this makes it so much easier. Thank you!
What if the site changes hand in terms of SEO consultant or just for the purpose of bringing it inhouse. Does the verification process need to start all over? How about plugging some option for user change while keeping the same verification code
Sounds like it might be a good idea to always have (at least) two verified owners... just in case!
where this button? i see only "add a site". :(
you restrict web-masters from russia? :)
Hi Googlemail.com users! The issue with accounts that use @googlemail.com should now be resolved -- you can now add these normally. Thanks for your patience!
It would be super-cool if I (an owner) granted access to someone, then if that user granted access to someone else, I (again the owner:) would be notified.
Great quick fix on the Google mail problem guys seems to be working on mine now.
+1 for adding additional users with restricted permissions - this is a must for many large clients, especially in the financial sector.
Adding a "read-only" user type really shouldn't be that difficult, and would be incredibly useful.
Really nice technique.Google always comes with nice features to their viewers always to helpthem.
Thanks
Hi,
I have master none-descrip email which is a verify owner of 20+ sites.
In Chrome logged with this non-descrip user, I added my real business email (named after my name) as another verified user to one site.
In Firefox, I logged in /webmasters/ with my business email. I am not seeing the site which I am supposed to be a newly verified user.
Note that both emails have Google Accounts.
Anyone experienced same outcome?
This is great, so much better then each one of my employees verifying it.
Two things...
1. Finally, and thanks very much!
2. I suppose a restricted permission option would be better, as Paul T said, but since you can no longer remove URL's without changing the robots.txt, it's not a big issue, is it?
There seem to be a bug, i can use the feature well but once I am inside "verification/*" there's no link going back to /tools/home
:) logo points to verification/home
Other than this I'm glad you finally enabled a multiple user feature, we've all been sharing the same login for the past 2 years
To follow up, I received my confimation email for "New verified owner..." 5 hours later.
Verification process works fine, just need to give it some time to process the request.
Awesome improvement!Way to go guys!
great ! enhancement
Google is th greatest search engine in the world.
http://www.ansarsunna.com
Best regards.
www.ansarsunna.com
Sounds good- will be interesting to start using it and see how it works!
I've added a number of additional Gmail accounts and have received the emails to confirm verification but when I log into Webmaster Tools with any of these newly added accounts none of the websites are shown.
Is anyone else experiencing this bug?
Do you have a workaround or permanent solution in place?
Okay, never mind my last comment.
It seems that once you add users in your master account those users still need to click the "Add a site" in their own Webmaster Tools dashboard and enter the URLs of the sites that you have added them to.
Perhaps this needs to be made clearer during the process of adding these new users.
GOODBLOG!!I am Happy with this information.thank you nice news!!
wow its i needed...
Google search tips are very necessary for all the google users
because they help in tuning the fine results of our requirement.
Especially They are useful in finding the good required results.
Google Search Tips have shown in this webpage. These tips helps in tracking the required results fastly in google search engine.
http://www.quickheed.com/seo/google-search-tips.html
Great web tool!!!
I have my site hosted on free host. It seems to me I can't get my own data?!? :)
What should I do?
its a great info ..
Does this verification allow for Adsense ads to be used on the verified site as well?
Great. But as per Paul T and many other comments, when will it have ability to handle different levels of access so suitable to client/agency setups?
Personally I'd like the ability to show certain information to all people - both for Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.
Personally I was searching these type of facility.Now got it.Thanks a lot Google
I just looked stupid telling a client this was not possible but can be done with a double verification technique.
And the client said it is possible.
Then I insisted... no, I am not talking about Google ANALYTICS, I am talking about Google WEBMASTER TOOLS.
Then client insist, no I can add you. Give me your Google account.
I give it and I am added.
*LOL* Benj pwned by client.
Well the feature was added in March, at least this happened to me in March too even if it was like 3 weeks ago. Still recent enough. :)
Great addition, thanks. You need to update this Google Help page though with this new feature information.
http://www.google.com/support/adplanner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=141477
It's not showing the verified green checkmark anymore, just "Add or remove users". Sites are verified, but this is confusing to the site owner who wants me to reverify every few days because she isn't see the checkmark anymore. Once you click into the information its verified. Put the green check back.
Mod up to thekenjones's comment: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/sharing-verification-love.html?showComment=1267894604267#c6104524719582796081
I made the same mistake. Once you're added as an owner to your website you still need to add the URL under Webmaster Tools. You'll be verified already.
+1 on the need to be able to delegate read-only access. This is a big issue for multi-client infrastructures.
If that's not doable, how about moving some of crawl and indexing feedback over into Analytics, where clients can pore over them all they want without giving them the ability to add/delete sitemaps, etc.?
A very important step has been missed out in this post.
After you have verified the additional user the user needs to go to his webmaster account and add that site to his account. Only then he will be able to see the details of the account.
I do not know how the webmaster
I have a problem, since I manage multiple Google analytics accounts the Google analytics verification errors: (in dutch: We kunnen uw site niet verifiëren: http://www.blabla.nl/)
Can't access webmaster tools. When i type the url www.google.com/webmasters and tried to login but its showing 404 error page. It is happening for past 1 week. Fix that because i want to list my "how to" blog.
Next problem when i tried to verify using my google analytics code in webmasters, it says it can't find the code. Help fix this as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Hi everyone,
Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Central Help Forum.
Thanks and take care,
The Webmaster Central Team
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