Google will not verify my site

  • Unknown's avatar
    nodyrb · Member ·

    I am trying to get google to recognize my site. I paid to have it add my blog to my existing domain name, as saltedhash.brydon.net using a cname record. I did this and that part of the process works fine. I attempted to verify my blog with both a TXT DNS record and with the wordpress.com verification interface.

    Google does not verify my site (and likewise does not produce search results). Site has been active over a month. What am I doing wrong?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • eurello · Staff ·

    Hi there – It can take some time for your site to be indexed by Google. When I search for saltedhash WordPress.com, your site comes up on the second page of results. It’s not yet showing your mapped subdomain, but the links redirect readers to the new one, and eventually Google will reflect that. You can read more about this here:
    Search Engines

    Also, we have some advice about SEO here:
    http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/seo-on-wordpress-com/

    You don’t need to verify your site with the webmaster tools for Google to index it, but that can give you some additional information about how Google is indexing your site.

  • Unknown's avatar
    nodyrb · Member ·

    But the Google developers web page says that the key to SEO is for the site to be verified by Google (and similar blah blah for bing, yahoo etc.). I did the stuff described at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en and http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/ and but Google does not verify my site.

    The Google verification at https://www.google.com/webmasters/verification/verification fails consistently. This verification process seems to be something that should pass/fail immediately and I don’t think requires stale dns info to be purged. Even so, it has failed now for several days. This is not an instant gratification problem.

  • eurello · Staff ·

    Hi there – your WordPress.com site does not need to be verified with Google in this way in order to be indexed. Google is indexing your site.

    For example, search for any chunk of text from your blog in quotes, and you’ll see your site comes up:
    http://cl.ly/image/3o1j2J443w2K

    For the verification failure, can you please describe in more detail which step in this process you get the error message:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/#google-webmaster-tools

    Please confirm that you kept both screens open when you pasted the code from Google into your page in WordPress.com, and then kept that page open when you went back and clicked “verify” with Google.

    Also please confirm the exact URL that you’re pasting in over at Google’s end.

  • Unknown's avatar
    nodyrb · Member ·

    I verified what you said in your message (thanks).

    The problem I was trying to deal with was google verification, not so much SEO, and your comments have focused on SEO. I believe I set up my cname record correctly (http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-subdomain/), and registered wordpress.com correctly (same link). Per info at http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/ , I tried to get google to verify the webpage with a TXT record (fail). Per documentation at http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/ and interface at https://saltedhash.wordpress.com/wp-admin/tools.php, tried to setup up google verification via your interface (fail). Earlier today, I also added meta info to http://www.brydon.net, which google verified. I see in the google logs though that since then it has failed twice on DNS TXT and DNS CNAME attempts. This suggests to me that something on the wordpress.com side is not set up correctly.

  • eurello · Staff ·

    Hi there – Hmm. I was wondering if it’s not possible to verify a subdomain separately from its root domain in webmaster tools, but I just tried it out with one of my subdomains and it verified just fine.

    Can you please delete your site from webmaster tools and try this entire process once more, exactly as described here:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/#google-webmaster-tools

    When you get to the step where you have to paste the meta tag into your blog, make sure to leave the webmaster tools screen open in one tab and your blog open in the other, while you paste and save the meta tag and leave your blog open while you click verify.

    If it still doesn’t work for you, please let me know at exactly which step it fails, and what the exact error from Google says. Thanks for your patience with this!

  • Unknown's avatar
    nodyrb · Member ·

    That is exactly the process I was trying to describe to you, which doesn’t work.

    Since it is somewhat working now (using different process from your documentation), I am a bit reluctant to delete what I have and start again with the “not working” stuff.

    One of the things I just noticed is that there is a mismatch between domain info. Details:
    – I own brydon.net, and have control of all of the domain management details (hosted by network solutions at netsol.com)
    – My webpage at your site is rooted at saltedhash.wordpress.com
    – Root webpage on your server has been aliased to saltedhash.brydon.net using cname record in my dns info (works ok)
    – Login info at your site is at https://saltedhash.wordpress.com/wp-login.php (ie. not brydon.net)
    – Attempting to login to https://saltedhash.brydon.net/wp-login.php seems to get to valid php code but the certificate is invalid (domain mismatch) and I can’t login
    – All of the things I did with google for verification (ie. TXT record, meta info, …) involved verifying saltedhash.brydon.net and being logged in at https://saltedhash.wordpress.com. [also http://www.brydon.net which is a side issue and should not be an issue here]

    At any rate, the meta info was added to saltedhash.brydon.net/saltedhash.wordpress.com, which you can see by going to the page and looking at the page source.

    I had the webmaster tools screen open in one tab (Firefox) and blog open in the other (actually the /wp-admin/tools.php window), and when I click “verify” on the webmaster tools window, a big red box appears with the words “We weren’t able to verify your domain: saltedhash.brydon.net”.

  • eurello · Staff ·

    Hi there – everything that you described is as expected, except for this part:

    I had the webmaster tools screen open in one tab (Firefox) and blog open in the other (actually the /wp-admin/tools.php window), and when I click “verify” on the webmaster tools window, a big red box appears with the words “We weren’t able to verify your domain: saltedhash.brydon.net”.

    Thanks for clarifying – it sounds like you’re doing everything correctly, and your meta tag looks correct. Unfortunately, I’m not sure why it’s not verifying for you. I suggest waiting 24 hours or so because perhaps verifying your root domain and subdomain in the same day was causing some problem. Then try again, and if it still gives you an error, you might need to contact Google support about this.

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