My GWT tells me that verification has failed numerous occasions - will this stop my site being crawled?
-
I launched www.over50choices.co.uk 6 weeks ago and have had trouble with google indexing and crawling all pages.
It tells me 143 submitted & 129 Indexed, but the site has 166 pages?
It still shows the old home page image in GWT - which is v annoying!
Whilst the site is verified by GA & HTML Tag, it tells me in the Verification section that "reverification failed" on numerous occasions - they seem correspond with when google trys to process the site map.
Is this a coincidence ie verification fails when its trying to process the site map, which in turn is leaving me with an out of date site map and therefore not all my pages submitted or crawled?
Or will this not effect the googles ability to crawl the site?
Your help please.
Ash
-
It might just be too late in the night but I'm having trouble understanding.
The steps are as follows:
Verify your site by uploading an HTML file:
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the Manage Site button next to the site you want, and then click Verify this site.
- If HTML file upload is not visible on the Recommended method tab, click the Alternate methods tab.
- Select HTML file upload, and follow the steps on your screen.
- Once you've added the tag to your home page, click Verify.
That last step is messed up I think they copied it from the other option (adding a tag to your homepage) but the last step should read "once you've uploaded the html file click verify"
Whenever I get confused like this I just start over entirely. Get the HTML file setup all over again like you're starting brand new for the first time. See what happens...
I'm really not sure how to better answer this. I'll see if I can revisit it in the morning but in the meantime I'd give it another go.
Good luck, keep us posted.
-
Hi Jesse thanks for your response.
My Web Developers have uploaded the HTML File as detailed in GWT but we still get the same error message that its the wrong file content eg it shows Google SiteMap Verification File - http://www.over50choices.co.uk/SiteMap.aspx - Ashley Shepherd
and not the google reference uploaded?!
Do you know how we remove or replace this file content so that google sees the correct one?
Thanks
Ash
-
No it won't stop your site being crawled. Still you should have access to your GWT account for things like messages and what-not.
Have you tried verifying by use of the HTML file they give you? I find this to be the most effective way. You can use all of these methods to verify:
- Add a meta tag to your home page (proving that you have access to the source files). To use this method, you must be able to edit the HTML code of your site's pages.
- Upload an HTML file with the name you specify to your server. To use this method, you must be able to upload new files to your server.
- Verify via your domain name provider. To use this method, you must be able to sign in to your domain name provider (for example, GoDaddy.com or networksolutions.com) or hosting provider and add a new DNS record.
- Add the Google Analytics code you use to track your site. To use this option, you must be an administrator on the Google Analytics account, and the tracking code must use the new asynchronous snippet.
Make sure you try them all just because.
In the meantime, upload your sitemap, declare it's location in robots.txt, and worry-not about your site's index.
It will be crawled as long as everything else is in order whether GWT is setup or not. I've seen so many site owners that had no idea GWT even existed who were being crawled regularly.
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
PDF best practices: to get them indexed or not? Do they pass SEO value to the site?
All PDFs have landing pages, and the pages are already indexed. If we allow the PDFs to get indexed, then they'd be downloadable directly from google's results page and we would not get GA events. The PDFs info would somewhat overlap with the landing pages info. Also, if we ever need to move content, we'd now have to redirects the links to the PDFs. What are best practices in this area? To index or not? What do you / your clients do and why? Would a PDF indexed by google and downloaded directly via a link in the SER page pass SEO juice to the domain? What if it's on a subdomain, like when hosted by Pardot? (www1.example.com)
Reporting & Analytics | | hlwebdev1 -
Google Web Master Tools show that my site has been crawled, but search results show old title tags, ect.
Does the index report reflect what will be displayed on Google results? Google seems to be indexing my site every Sunday...
Reporting & Analytics | | 928shopper0 -
404 errors more than 1.8 lacs, Duplicate Content, Duplicate title, missing meta description increasing as site is based on regular ticket selling (CRM), kindly help
Sites error increasing i.e. 404 errors more than 1.8 lacs, Duplicate Content, Duplicate title, missing meta description increasing day by day as site is based on regular ticket selling (CRM), We have checked with webmasters for 404's, but it is not easy to delete 1.8 lac entries. How to resolve this issue for future. kindly help and suggest the solution.
Reporting & Analytics | | 1akal0 -
Having Issue with Site Search in Analytics
Hi Mozzers, We launched a website in October 2012 and have added in the settings(Google analytics) of that profile "Do Track Site Search" since we have a search box on the website. The site search report worked for 10 days and it was over(from end of december till beginning of January 2013). Since then I have been trying to understand this issue. I have added all the query search terms possible, but still not showing any signs of life. At this point I am not sure what to do? Some Help would be appreciated! Search URL= subdomain.example.com**/search/node/**.... Thanks! z93cGUZ.png
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Linking Multiple Niche Site In Same Google Analytics Account
Hi, I am providing SEO for Local business. Is it advisable to separate out the Google Analytics into different Google account or is it ok to remain it this way? Some of the client might be in the same niche, and might be competing with the same keywords as well. What I was worried is, Google might see these sites as same owner and only rank for 1 of the site. I was thinking to get the owners to register for their own Google Analytics and share the access to me.
Reporting & Analytics | | JonathanSoh0 -
Homepage on page 2 for site:domain
Hi all, today I noticed that our homepage is located on page 2 if you do the site:domain query. As far as I know, the site:domain results mirror the importance in the eyes of Google. Some time ago, our homepage was the first result. I have to say that we do not often have changing elements or new content on the homepage, it is more like a static page. But still the most linked to page on the domain... What conclusion can I come to? Is our homepage of lower importance to Google than some time ago? Is it a problem for SEO? As we backed down our advertisments, the traffic from branded keywords fell the last months - could this be an explanation? And, most important: do I have to worry? (Besides, the SEO-traffic is fine and growing..)
Reporting & Analytics | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Yahoo Site explorer: Different results for www & non-www domain. Can we merge these?
When checking our domain on yahoo site explorer, different results are shown for www.theprintspace.de and theprintspace.de. We have done a 301 redirect, as we want to optimise our www.theprintspace.de domain. However, we have a lot more backlinks for theprintspace.de. Is there any way of merging the two, so we don't loose all the linkjuice we get for theprintspace.de and use those links to optimise www.theprintspace.de? Thanks for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | Waplington0 -
Setting up Google Analytic Goals to a 3rd Party Site
I recently received help on a question I asked on SEOmoz but need additional clarification. I am trying to set up goals in Google Analytics for people who click on a “purchase botton” which sends them to PayPal. I created a Thank You page and tried to get PayPal to redirect to it, however, our customers only get to our site’s 404 page. Here is what I’ve done so far: Went into my PayPal account and turned the “Auto Return” to ‘on’ Under website payment preferences, I added the following URL http://www.teecycle.org/thank-youutm_nooverride1. (I formatted the URL this way because the person who provided me with help recommended using the format ?UTM_nooverride=1. However, our CMS system won’t allow “?” or “=”)
Reporting & Analytics | | EricVallee340