Verify your site ownership
What is verification?
Verification is the process of proving that you own the property that you claim to own. Search Console needs to verify ownership because verified owners have access to sensitive Google Search data for a site, and can affect a site's presence and behavior on Google Search and other Google properties. A verified owner can grant full or view access to other people.
Verify a website property
- Either add a new property or choose an unverified property from your property selector.
- Choose one of the verification methods listed below and follow the instructions. The verification page will list which methods are available and recommended for your site.
Using multiple verification methods
You can add multiple verification methods in your property's verification settings page. You might want to add more than one verification method in case one of your existing verification methods fails (for example, if you verified using a Google Analytics tracking code, and someone changes a template on your website that omits the tag).
To add an additional verification method, visit the Settings page for the property and click Ownership verification
Multiple people can verify ownership of the same website property, using the same or different verification methods. If you use the same verification method, just be sure that you don't overwrite the verification tokens of any other owners.
Verifying child properties
Once you have verified a property, you can create and verify child properties very easily with the same verification method with little additional work. That is, if you have verified ownership of example.com using the HTML file upload method, any child properties that you create will be auto-verified using the same method.
How long does verification last?
Verification lasts as long as Search Console can confirm the presence and validity of your verification token. Search Console periodically checks if your verification token is still present and valid (for example, by checking if your HTML verification tag is still present). If verification can no longer be confirmed, you will be notified. If the issue is not fixed, your permissions on that property will expire after a certain grace period.
If all verified owners lose access to a property, all users with full view permissions will then lose access to the Search Console property.
The user agent that performs HTML tag verification has the user agent token Google-Site-Verification and the full user agent string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-Site-Verification/1.0)
When will I start to see data?
Data is collected for a property as soon as anyone adds it in Search Console, even before verification occurs.
We lost our only verified site owner!
If the only verified owner of your site leaves your team, or you're not sure who the verified owner is, you (or someone you know) should verify ownership to maintain (or regain) access to the property.
If you are taking over a site from another owner, after you verify ownership you can unverify previous owners by removing their verification token (for example, removing the HTML tag from the site, for HTML-tag-verified owners). See Add or remove owners for more information.
Choosing a verification method
Search Console supports several different verification methods. See the table below to help choose a method that works best for you.
| Method | Notes |
|---|---|
| HTML file upload | Relatively simple, but requires the ability to upload a file and publish it on your site at a specific URL. Might not be possible on a site hosting platform. |
| HTML tag | Relatively simple, but requires the ability to edit the HTML source code of your site's homepage. Might not be possible on a site hosting platform. |
| Google Analytics tracking code | Simple, if the page already has a Google Analytics tracking code for a Google Analytics account that you can access. If the page does not have a tracking code, you must must add one (which may require creating a Google Analytics account if you don't already have one). |
| Google Tag Manager | Simple if the page already has a Google Tag Manager snippet for a Google Tag Manager account that you can access. If the page does not have a snippet, you must must add one (which may require creating a Tag Manager account if you don't already have one). |
| Google Sites, Blogger, or Domains account | Use the recommended method for each platform. |
| Domain name provider | More complex, but is the only way to verify a Domain property. If your domain provider is listed in the verification wizard, then this is a simple process. Domain properties are useful because they include data for all protocol (http/https) and subdomain variations of your property. |
Verification method details
Sites that use a website hosting platform
HTML file upload
HTML tag
Domain name provider
Google Analytics tracking code
Google Tag Manager container snippet
Google Sites
Blogger
Google Domains
Where should I put my verification tag?
If you are using a tag-based verification method (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or the HTML tag methods), Search Console will look for your verification tag in the page to which a non-logged-in user is redirected when visiting the URL that defines your property.
Example
If you define your property as https://example.com, and any non-logged in user who types that URL in their browser is redirected to https://example.com/home, then Search Console will look for your verification tag in the page https://example.com/home.
For other verification methods, such as the file upload method, redirects are not followed.
Common verification errors
In addition to any method-specific verification errors, the following verification errors are possible in most verification methods:
- Incorrect tag/snippet/file errors Be sure to use the exact tag, code snippet, or file provided to you when beginning verification.
- The connection to your server timed out. We were unable to verify your file because we received a server timeout. This could be because your server is down or is busy and responding slowly. Make sure that your server is responding and try again.
- We encountered an error looking up your site's domain name. We tried to access your verification file, but were unable to access your domain due to a DNS error. This could be because your server is down, or there is an issue with the DNS routing to your domain. Make sure that your domain is resolving correctly and try again.
- The download request was redirected too many times. Check the URL for potential issues, such as an infinite loop.
- Your server returned an invalid response. This can happen if your site is requires password authentication, or if we cannot access it for other reasons.
- We were unable to connect to your server. Make sure that your server is not down, and that your domain is resolving correctly, and try again.
- An internal error occurred. If this problem persists, check the Webmaster Central Help Forum for updates.
- Timeout Either your site or the domain server stopped responding to our requests (depending on the verification method used). Confirm that your site is responding, and then try again.
- Could not find your domain We tried to resolve the site URL that you gave us, but it is unknown to the DNS service. Check that you are providing the correct URL for your property.
If you are having issues verifying ownership of your domain, you can contact us: