So the folks over at Google haven't updated their guide to verifying your website in a while. A quick search yields posts by angry 'webmasters' unable to find this mythical homepage from as early as 2009. A more recent example from 1/18/11 pretty much sums up the typical user experience with this problem.
You own a website, have it registered and hosted by some DNS agency and webhost, respecively. In order to improve your website's page rank on Goolge, you have read their handy Search Engine Optimization guides here:(pdf file) and here:(webpage). Unfortunately for whatever reason you were unable to verify your site with Google on the first try, and had to do something else away from your computer. Not being a quitter, you decided to give it another go a bit later. But ALAS! All of Google's instructions for verifying tell you to go to the 'Webmaster Tools homepage' and click on the 'Verify' link next to the site you wish to verify. But that is very difficult now since you aren't exactly sure what/where the 'Webmaster Tools homepage' is. To complicate things even further, that 'Verify' link doesn't seem to exist.
If you haven't done so yet, log in to your Google account.
Then go here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en.
AHA! There are my sites! But wait, there isn't a link next to them that says 'Verify' ... the only things next to my URL's are a check-box and a drop-down selector with entries for 'Add or remove owners' and 'Google Analytics profile'.
*hmm...?*
Click on the drop-down selector and choose 'Add or remove owners'. The page should reload and after that ...
VOILA! You should now be able to see a link smack in the middle of the page that reads "Verify using a different method".
I only post this because it just took me half an hour to figure that out <)
Oh, and to anyone that finds this helpful, you're welcome! ;)
-H
No comments:
Post a Comment