I just learned about Google Webmaster Tools and am psyched to learn how to use them. My first puzzle, however, is how to “verify” my site with the tools. Can you explain that, please?
Google is a great corporate example of what sociologists call enlightened self interest, and its Webmaster Tools demonstrate that neatly. On the surface, how nice, Google’s giving us a set of tools to help us keep our Web sites clean, neat and correct. Underneath, however, Google’s serving its own interests too: the Webmaster tools help enforce what it believes are best practices for site design and layout, helping minimize errors encountered by the Googlebot.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, and I am a proponent of just about every tool Google makes available, from AdSense to Analytics. It’s just worthwhile to understand why a big corporation like Google offers tools gratis…
Now, on to the Webmaster tools.
Log in to your Google account, and you should probably see something like this:
I hadn’t realized that I haven’t verified this very site, Ask Dave Taylor, so I’ll do so by clicking on “Verify” next to the listed domain name. Here’s what I see:
As you can read, there are two ways you can verify that you own the site. You can either add some code to the home page or you can upload a file with a specified (randomly generated) name. I’ll choose the former by clicking on “Choose verification method…” and selecting “Add a meta tag”:
The meta tag it wants me to add to the home page of the site is:
I add this to the “index.html” page on this site and click on the “Verify” button:
Done! Sweet!
Princelogo.com says thank you so much..I wanted to add search console to my site but took me over 2 weeks.
Now with just a few articles on this page i was able to edit my css style and hurrayyyyyyy!!!…am in now..Thank you much.
askdavetaylor.com….thumps up..
I recently updated my theme, so my site verification code disappeared. I re-added it to the new theme, but it doesn’t appear to work. Do you know if this is normally a problem, and what I could do about it? Thanks.
how to add my twitter account to webmaster..please help..
thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Thanks for the tutorial, Dave. Your blog has a really good setup for seo too. Awesome
Donlolo, if you *read* what I’d written instead of just looking at the pictures, you’d know that I am *explaining* what to do and encouraging readers to follow along with their own Webmaster Tools account and Web site. Your criticism doesn’t really make sense, actually.
whoever trying to give instruction how to properly verify your site with google webmaster is a straight up idiot….how u gonna give instructions when all you do is copy and paste what google webmaster itself is telling how to verify…we are asking for step by step instructions….moron!
Hello olayinka,
I think that the easiest and best way is to verify your site by uploading to your public_hrml the html file that google tells you.
Regards, Themis
give me my google verify
please help me, i was trying to verify my blog for 2 weeks nownot yet verify..it say “Verification failed. Your site’s home page returns a status of 503 (Service unavailable) instead of 200 (OK)” please i what should i do… i have paste the code to my template .. and it save successful…. so i don’t what is wrong..please help me
I have my meta tag, I know where to go to verify, what I do not know is how to find my home page.
Please give me step-by-step instructions on how to find my home page, I found one under ‘Page’ in the upper right screen corner, but I cannot paste on that one.
I just need simple instructions, step-by-step on how to access my home page.
Thank in advance.
E.
Do I really need this verification code
Brilliant. Thanks for the advice.
how can i verify my site by using google account?
I had verified my site and was submitting news sitemaps. But today when I try to submit the news sitemaps, it tells me that I have not verified the site.
Yet, the site does not allow to re-verify it. Is there something wrong here?
how to verify my website in webmaster tools?give me more informations please
i am having same problem……………please help
I am not finding this so easy. Even thou it reads like it should be a piece of cake.
I tried the option ‘upload an HTML file’ All good, when click on given link I could view in my browser..
But cannot get my site to verify.
I get this error message :-
Verification status: NOT VERIFIED
Last attempt Feb 21, 2009: Our system has experienced a temporary problem.
The only help suggestion given that I think it could be is
**We were unable to access the verification file due to a restriction in robots.txt.
Which I am clue less on.. Google has not given any samples on what I should remove or add to make this work…!!!
The other option to ad to the home page, which i should be able to do.. Right, if I can this far and build my own site you would think this would be a walk in the park. My site is a wordpress blog. I can’t find a index.html file anywhere, I have crawled my server and looked everywhere in the dashboard of my blog. But I can find it.
any suggestions..!!
Cheers
DeDe
hei,taylor your blog is super loaded with good information,layout,template.
i have added my site to google webmaster but it says “httperror404,we cant able to find sitemap for you”.
what can i do to for submiting it,please help me,
I have just verified my blog on Google Blogger by changing the meta tag in blog template. It’s very easy
Adding the meta tag is pretty straightforward. I remember that when I used the webmaster tool for the first time, I chose creating a file with the random name given, however, it didn’t work at all. The application said that it was receiving a 404 error, that is, file not found. has anybody made it work this way (random-generated filename)?