Jalaj P. Jha Technical & Miscellaneous Ramblings

21May/07122




Get your Wordpress.com Blog Google Verified

Google Webmaster Tools extends a range of tools / reports allowing you to know how your site/blog is placed in Google searches, which are the most popular keywords that result in your site being showed in searches, and which made researcher to click and follow to your site, internal and external links to your site/blog

webmaster.jpg

This and much more you can get only when your site is verified by Google. Google allows you to choose one of the two methods:
- Either you add a meta tag to your home page as given by Google
- Or you add a web page with a name as suggested by Google.

If you are successful in doing one of the above, you are the winner. Unfortunately as a Wordpress.com blog owner, me and the others don't have facility to perform any one of the above.

So should we just stop our efforts? No! well said, Where there's a Will... there's a Way...

And yes! There is certainly a way following which I have successfully verified my blog with Google. If you too own a blog at Wordpress.com you will be able to do it too!!!

Assumed that you own a Google account, Log on to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview

Submit your blog url at "Add Site:". Your site would be added instantly but in absence of verification you will not have access to most of the features. Click on the link that says "Verify your site"

As mentioned above you will be required to choose one of the verification methods. Choose "Upload an HTML file" and you will be told to upload a file with name similar to "google51603ad9d1bcb791.html".

Question is how do we upload the file?

Leave the Window opened and open the Wordpress.com Dashboard. Navigate through the links to create a new page (please note PAGE not post). Give the page title as the name of the HTML that Google gave and press on "Publish" and your page gets published.

Unfortunately though, the page that appears is "google51603ad9d1bcb791html" i.e. stripping off the DOT before html. :-(

But... :-) fortunately the same thing also happens when you try to access "google51603ad9d1bcb791.html" at your blog. Wordpress.com strips off the DOT (mod-rewrite) and shows up you the page "google51603ad9d1bcb791html". No "File Not Found Error" is returned unlike what you would have expected.

Now... you just need... to open the Google verification page again and fire the "Verify" button and you have done it...

Update (04.06.2007):
Google insists and requires you to maintain the verification page which it can occasionally check and in absense of which the blog will again appear as Unverified. The re-verification mostly seem to be happening when you make changes in settings as "Crawl Rate" etc or add or delete a sitemap.

If you are using a theme that doesnot show up the pages by default, then it's better that instead of using "Pages" widget you use a "Text" widget to manually show your pages. Otherwise you can, instead of deleting the page mark it with status "Draft" and publish it whenever you need to re-verify and then again mark it as Draft.

The Google Webmaster Tools is worth it. For details read Google Webmaster Tools - A Tutorial

Happy Googling........

Hi //Engtech and Lorelle . Please help spreading the word. Thanks
Comments (122) Trackbacks (35)
  1. This may already have been addressed (I didn’t read through all of the comments), but WordPress now mod-rewrites the page as google51603ad9d1bcb791-html, not google51603ad9d1bcb791html.

    So, when the page is created, you have to click “Edit link” and get rid of the dash. Then, it works just like before!

    Thank you for the post!

  2. Thanks man. You solved my problem! :)
    Thanks a lot

  3. Нынешним женщинам не составляет труда вести себя по мужски; но им очень редко удается вести себя по джентельменски. Комптон Макензи ;)

  4. What should i do now? Google changed the html authentification.

  5. Thanx pal. I am able to make a new page with the same name as the google file google6019941d8ea4df91.html and when i click the verify link on webmasters page it opens the same page but still it shows “not verified” “Your verification file does not have the right content.”

    pls help me out.

  6. Well, this definetly does not work any more. Google seems to have change the process and “Edit link” on WP does not remove the “-”.

    Does anyone now for other solutions?

  7. Очень полезная вещь, спасибо!!

  8. My happiness didn’t even last a couple of months. The method’s not working nonw. :(

  9. Автор молодец. Затронул тему до глубины. Кстати хочу тоже поделится некоторыми открытиями – Трахеобронхомегалия. Неправда ли жесть?

  10. Yep, it’s not working for me either…sigh…

  11. lengthy and in depth article but full of useful information

  12. not working

  13. Worked OK for Blogger as well. Added metatag and “it forked”. Thanks for a great post!

  14. No matter WHAT I do, My site only has like 2600 views :mad:

  15. Doesn’t work, bgmindstorms is correct. Has anybody tried inserting the meta tag into the CSS?

  16. @auberstschnell @shankarsir @bgmindstorms There is a more simpler way now.. Just click on the tools link in your dashboad(above settings) Viola ! There is a section for this where u can add your metatag and verify.

  17. @anthoon and other..
    This post is related to wordpress.com where you don’t have facility to add meta tags or upload html files… don’t get confused with self hosted wordpress.org blogs

  18. @Jalaj:
    anthoon isn’t confused with self hosted wordpress.org blogs… Now, in Wordpress.com hosted blogs, you’re able to configure the pages to be properly verified by Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer or Bing Webmaster Center using meta tags!

    Just go to the “Tools” link in your Wordpress.com blog dashboard. In the end of the screen, you will see the field to set the meta tags for those three services ;)

  19. Great Post! I was about to throw my computer out the window

  20. Any updates on this method? Looks like .html is important for google now


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