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8th February 2008

Verifying a googlepages site for Webmaster Tools

posted in GWHG, Google |

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I’ve seen quite a few people in Google’s webmaster help group ask how to verify their site for webmaster tools when using a Googlepages website. I took a cursory look and couldn’t find any online documentation so I tried it myself. The procedure I used is outlined below with screen shots. There may be a better way out there, but I know this one works.

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1. First sign into Webmaster Tools and go to the dashboard where you will see a box to add your site. Type in your googlepages sites name here, just mysite.googlepages.com, with no ‘/home’ or any other subfolders or file names.

Add your site

2. You’ll then be prompted with a link as the next step to verify your site, click that.

Verify

3. They will then ask you for a method to verify with a pull down that says, “choose verification method…” You’ll want to select the “Upload HTML File” Method.

Choose method

4. After you’ve chosen your method, the next screen will show you a file name. This is the file you will need to create to upload to your Googlepages site. I just highlighted the file name, opened up my text editor application (in my case its notepad), then picked ’save as’, when prompted for the name I pasted the file name that Google gave me, and hit save. The file can be blank like that, as Google is only going to look for its existence, not what’s in it.

copy_html_name.jpg

5. In another tab or another browser session open up your Googlepages account, and under your site manager, to the right you’ll see a box appropriately name “uploaded stuff.” Select the link [upload] (if you have files there already) or select the ‘browse’ button. You’ll then need to browse to the location of the file you saved in the previous step.

upload_file.jpg

6. The final step is to go back to your Webmaster Tools account and click the ‘verify’ button. The response should be almost instant where you will see the verified screen. Now go and enjoy all the benefits that being a verified owner of a site offers you.

verified.jpg

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 4:08 pm and is filed under GWHG, Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. All comments are subject to my NoFollow policy. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 60 responses to “Verifying a googlepages site for Webmaster Tools”

Why not let me know what you think by adding your own comment! All the cool kids are doing it.

  1. 1 MyAvatars 0.2 On February 21st, 2008, chitra said:

    sir,
    my site map is verified what next , i am not understanding wheather my site is active or no ,so that i can proseed or not,please tell me clearly if any error let me know
    thank u

  2. 2 MyAvatars 0.2 On February 22nd, 2008, graeden greaves said:

    cheers pal, i owe you a beer, i have been trying to get verified for so long, and it is only your clear instruction that got me through

  3. 3 MyAvatars 0.2 On February 23rd, 2008, Bill Healy said:

    Similar problem

    Does anyone know how to verify a blogspot.com web site?

    Is there a technique to upload the html file or to add the meta tag?

    Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

  4. 4 MyAvatars 0.2 On February 24th, 2008, sunny2009 said:

    Hi, Thanks I have verified my site Have a beer on my account

  5. 5 MyAvatars 0.2 On February 25th, 2008, Mike said:

    Followed youe instructions but always came up “404 couldnt find page” The only thing Ican see is that “home” is being left out of the page address and I can’t figure out how to get in into the address.

  6. 6 MyAvatars 0.2 On February 29th, 2008, Mike said:

    OK, tried it again today, twice, following your insuructions to the letter but still no joy. still won’t include “home” in the filename and comes up 404 file not found

  7. 7 MyAvatars 0.2 On February 29th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    You shouldn’t be trying to include ‘home’ in the filename. “type in your googlepages sites name here, just mysite.googlepages.com, with no ‘/home’ or any other subfolders or file names.”

  8. 8 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 1st, 2008, Mike said:

    Your a genius. What Google couldn’t explain to me you made very clear. My sites are verifified.
    Thanks, Mike

  9. 9 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 6th, 2008, prakash.nagdev said:

    sir, i just read your helpful page or blog i am very much thankful to you for info my above mentioned pages are not yet verified and i get 404 or error report from webmaster, i will follow your info and try it pray for me and please get beer can or crate in advance for getting my pages verified and indexed at an early date . i will contact you with whatever result i get within 2 days. lots of love and many many thanks in advance. keep it up for good job.

  10. 10 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 7th, 2008, Dan said:

    Wow! It worked. Took me about an hour, but I didn’t think it was possible.

  11. 11 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 7th, 2008, Paulette said:

    I am so confused! Is getting my site verified - the same as registering the domain?
    I am trying to get to the point where it can be paulettejackson.com without the googlepages on the end. Is it hopeless?

  12. 12 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 7th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    Paulette, it’s not the same thing. Verifying it with Google is only so you can access their Webmaster Tools. Registering a domain needs to be done with a registrar, which Google may be one of them, but not the same thing as verifying.

  13. 13 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 8th, 2008, Ronald Spainhour said:

    Your instructions were well presented and helpful;however I’m still doing something wrong. Think I’m confused about creating the text page with the verifying code Google gives me. Google keeps telling me they cannot find my site.

    My website is: gothamshots.googlepages.com If I email it to friends, they can view it.

    Any suggestions?

  14. 14 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 8th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    Ronald, send me the location and name of your verification file by using my contact me page, I’ll see if I can figure anything out.

  15. 15 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 10th, 2008, john said:

    thanks dude have a shot and a beer on me once i got it it worked.

  16. 16 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 10th, 2008, Shelley said:

    I am not able to find my website online. I do use Google adwords to point people to my sight, but I would like to be able to point it to a domain (and mask the address) to the existing site. Is that possible? How can I do it once I buy a new domain name.

    Thank you

  17. 17 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 11th, 2008, Nayseal said:

    I have done everything to the letter but unfortunately I get a message that reads:
    We’ve detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a status of 200 (Success) in the header.

    Please Please help!

  18. 18 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 11th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    Nayseal, if you are using the file verification method Google will check for the existence of that file, and then check to make sure a file that doesn’t exists returns an error code of 404, or not found. The reason they do this is that if your site doesn’t return a 404 for page that don’t exist, anyone could log into their own webmasters tools account and add your site, since any file either existing or not would return a status of 200. That wouldn’t be a good thing as they could then start removing pages from the index.

    To see this in action, this link points to a website that will allow you to see the status codes for a file that doesn’t exist on your site:
    http://oyoy.eu/page/headers/?full=1&url=http%3a%2f%2fnayspromo08.webs.com%2fdoesnotexist.html

    It returns a 302 found and then redirects to a freewebs page. Either you have to set up the site to return a 404 for non existent files or use the meta-tag method of validating to use Google Webmaster Tools on that site.

  19. 19 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 12th, 2008, andrea said:

    omg!! i was about to throw my computer through the sliding glass door until i found your tutorial! it worked, and i’m so happy! you made my day! thanks!

  20. 20 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 19th, 2008, LeMom said:

    YOU ROCK!!! I have always been SO close but just couldn’t get it. I figured out the part about not having the “/home” but the rest always got messed up someplace.

    THANK YOU..I wish I really could give you a beer!

  21. 21 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 20th, 2008, prakash.nagdev said:

    i get code 404 and header not found when i last tried with site verification using above steps.

  22. 22 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 24th, 2008, Gerald said:

    I have Word as my text editor and it adds .doc at the end of my file, is that why I can’t get verified? Also how do I get rid of files I have uploaded to my site?
    Plese help

  23. 23 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 24th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    In Word you can choose “save as” from the file menu, then select “as webpage” which will allow you to save it as xxxx.html. The file name needs to be EXACTLY as Google says it is, the addition of .doc or anything else will not work.

    After files are uploaded on Googlepages there will be a little garbage can next to them in the list, click that to delete them.

  24. 24 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 25th, 2008, Bhauna said:

    Hi John,
    thank u so much for creating this posting site. I love the GPC and how hands on it is, but i would kill to be able to ask someone questions. I am very new to this and have followed the steps for verifying and accessing the webmaster tools, but keep coming up with the 404. The webmaster says my site is verified, I used the html file route. But can’t tell me anymore because of the 404 error.
    I can only access my site by putting in the ‘/home’ bit at the end.

    Am i nuts? I would really appreciate any help you can offer!
    thanks
    B

  25. 25 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 25th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    Bhauna,

    I’m not an expert in Googlepages, but I’ll give it a shot.

    If you click the “site settings” link in the upper right of your site manager page, you will see a setting in bold for “Homepage” described as, ‘The homepage is the default page for your site’. If you’ve got that set to “-no homepage-” when you access the site without the /home on it will give you a 404. However if you set that to your home page (it doesn’t need to be home, you could select any page you want) whenever some access your site with just the base address of yoursite.googlepages.com it will show that page. The page will also be available at yoursite.googlepages.com/home but if you set your links on your pages to the base address that is what should eventually be shown in the search engines.

  26. 26 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 25th, 2008, Gerald said:

    Thanks for the advice in using word in an html download to google. You do use the “save as” then copy in the address exactly and in the bottom of the window “save as type you must choose “web page, filtered” and when you go to save it it will warn you about saving as that type say yes. Thanks so much for the help.

  27. 27 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 26th, 2008, Bhauna said:

    thanks for replying John, really appreciate it. will give it a shot and let you know how it works out. can’t buy you a beer from over here, but if you ever need free legal advice, you know who to call!
    B

  28. 28 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 26th, 2008, Bhauna said:

    It worked! You’re a genius to all us mere (non-techy) mortals!
    Thanks John

  29. 29 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 26th, 2008, Takun said:

    I followed all your directions and it still says NOT VERIFIED : We encountered an error looking up your site’s domain name.

    I don’t know if it’s because google hasn’t crawled my site yet its all published .. any ides. I uploaded the google.html file to the root of my dir tree name.googlepages.com/ and it just dosn’t want to varify .. sigh..

  30. 30 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 28th, 2008, Riley said:

    I did everything perfect. but it always comes up “We encountered an error looking up your site’s domain name”. I dont get it? someone help me?. wait can i use mozilla firefox or do i have to se internet explorer?

  31. 31 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 29th, 2008, prakash.nagdev said:

    i did check with your instruction as per your comments on this page post no 18. when checked with my url ie earncashworkathome .com. googlepages. com i got 302 found/found and code 200 ok/ok in result code but when i verify with webmaster i get 404 server time out or site not found or your header error. sir will you be kind enough get me out of this mess.

  32. 32 MyAvatars 0.2 On March 30th, 2008, Kathy said:

    Thanks so much for taking the time to explain each step! And now that you’ve shown yourself as a guru, any random thoughts on how I can get all the html mumbo-jumbo PayPal “Pay Now” button on my google webiste?

  33. 33 MyAvatars 0.2 On April 1st, 2008, Aida said:

    Dear John,

    I think I might have a similar problem to Ronald, 8thMarch.
    I have my pages in google, I have indexed them, I have verified them, I have add the sitemap, and still Google doesn´t crawl my pages.

    Do you, please, have any suggestions for me?

    Thank you for your care.
    Best
    Aida

  34. 34 MyAvatars 0.2 On April 6th, 2008, Big John said:

    I created a web site with register.com I am trying to get it verified with google but register.com will not let me paste anything in the header or ad html. What do I do since I have spent so much time creating this page. Thanks for any help you could give me.

  35. 35 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 2nd, 2008, Gwyn said:

    Thanks so much for the tutorial, you’re a lifesaver! I believe I am following all the rules, but I still get 404 File not found. My issue: I’m saving the file in Word as a web page, filtered. My upload still reads: google84d44f5cf1ec5ed2.html.doc. So I have the html part, but it is adding .doc that I neither want nor need. Can you help?

  36. 36 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 5th, 2008, Terry Lowe said:

    Thank you so much I have been trying for about a week to get my site verified with the instructions google give, (as clear as mud), I don’t know why they just don’t direct people here. I was wondering do you think is worth doing all this stuff with site maps not that I know what it is all about. Anyway thanks again.

  37. 37 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 6th, 2008, Gyan prakash said:

    I have created web pages but still not able to verify my web pages. I am getting same error 404. kindly help me.

    Gyan

  38. 38 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 11th, 2008, Stated Machete said:

    Thanks a bunch guy! I wonder why Google doesnt add this info to their database. There is a conspiracy theory i believe!

  39. 39 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 14th, 2008, CJS said:

    i follow your directions above but i still get a 404 error. i read your post about the link that points to a website that will allow you to see the status codes for a file that doesn’t exist on your site, but i get confused and dont know what to do. any idea?

  40. 40 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 14th, 2008, CJS said:

    i got it!!!……i didnt read your guidlines as close as i thought…thankyou

  41. 41 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 16th, 2008, Jessica said:

    I don’t know how to make chatrooms or how to make “windows” for people to wright in!
    Please help me!

  42. 42 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 18th, 2008, CJS said:

    you may like http://smartgb.com/
    its free and you don’t have to sign up on the website to get the web address for it. create a link to that address on your webpage and people can comment on it.
    if you want you can check out charliejsanders.googlepages.com and see how i did it.

  43. 43 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 20th, 2008, gopinathanrm said:

    tryin so hard i found it ri8 thanx !!!!

  44. 44 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 23rd, 2008, Arthur said:

    Hey Bud,

    Thanks 4 the advise, been battling for a while, Truckload of Brewskies on the way for ya!

  45. 45 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 24th, 2008, richsmck said:

    Folks if you utilize this information - you need to buy this person at least one beer - this posting was a Blessing - thanks for your help - new to the game and working on it. But I surely bought you a BEER.

    THANKS!!!!!

  46. 46 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 25th, 2008, kat said:

    Thank you… I am not up on this at all… I am just wanting to use the tools at google to create information to share… thank you so very much for your step by step instructions… I was making it way to hard!!! Take Care!

  47. 47 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 27th, 2008, binh said:

    do you know the process to verify a Google Sites? I’ve tried entering a meta tag and uploading a HTML page, but it still doesn’t work.

  48. 48 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 27th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    richsmck, thank you.

    binh, what google sites?

  49. 49 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 27th, 2008, binh said:

    john, Google Sites (http://googlesitesblog.blogspot.com/) is an tool within Google Apps. I’m using it to host my domain (www.executiverun.ca) and create webpages. I haven’t used Googlepages, but I believe it’s similar to it but with more tools. Thanks.

  50. 50 MyAvatars 0.2 On May 27th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

    There is nothing to verify at executiverun.ca as it uses a 301 redirect to a Google site, see:
    http://oyoy.eu/page/headers/?full=1&url=www.executiverun.ca. You’ll need to get the content to show up on executiverun.ca first before Google will verify much less index it.

    I’d imagine that something isn’t set up right and the content should be shown on your domain with the 301 redirect being FROM the sites.google.com page TO yours.

  51. 51 MyAvatars 0.2 On June 4th, 2008, Ahmed said:

    Explanations clear as spring water!Thank you.

  52. 52 MyAvatars 0.2 On June 5th, 2008, Merry said:

    Thank you for these instructions.

    I worked for over 2 hours last night trying to get my googlepages website verified.

    After reading these instructions, I figured out what I was doing wrong. I was adding the “/home” at the end.

    Once I took that off, my web page was verified immediately.

  53. 53 MyAvatars 0.2 On June 6th, 2008, Seetha Lakshmi said:

    I tried hard, once i found it is really very useful for me to move further.
    Thanks

  54. 54 MyAvatars 0.2 On June 7th, 2008, ALTAF said:

    METHOD SIMPLE THOUGH NOT VERIFIED YET

  55. 55 MyAvatars 0.2 On September 23rd, 2008, Alfonso said:

    Hello I see that you have help many people. I am really getting tired of trying to verify my site. I have tried everything. I just do not know how to upload my html file named: google5d6f6e62b6dfe075.html to my website. there is no place that shows me UPLOAD. when I go to web creator I do see where I can download files but I don’t see my website. I do see an old website that I was working on that I do not want any long. Please help me. I need to get my website verified so I could go to the next step.

  56. 56 MyAvatars 0.2 On October 7th, 2008, KD said:

    I am facing the same problem, but in this case its on Wordpress 2.6.2. My site is: http://hostingwebsitecoupons.com I am totally lost & have tried almost everything. Dont know what to do.. :-(

  57. 57 MyAvatars 0.2 On October 19th, 2008, Judy said:

    OK Same problem. I’ve saved the html file in word and saved it with “web page” and “web page fileted” I still have the .doc on the end so i guess that’s why it won’t verify.
    Geez thank you ahead for your help…………..

  58. 58 MyAvatars 0.2 On October 19th, 2008, Judy said:

    please notify me of your answer on the html file (question above) didn’t check that box before

  59. 59 MyAvatars 0.2 On December 3rd, 2008, johan said:

    my web site is on MSN and i want to edit the name it displays in the seach result
    can u help me PLZ. I created my website with GPC

  60. 60 MyAvatars 0.2 On December 3rd, 2008, johan said:

    my site is on msn HOW do i setup the keywords for my site to search for ????
    http://www.palisade-fencing.co.cc

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