Verifying your website with Google

Anytime you use a Google Webmaster tools, you’ll need to verify ownership of the website to Google. Verification with Google does not affect PageRank or your website’s performance in any way. It does allow you to use Google’s products. Verifying ownership of a website is easy and you have more than one option on how to do so. There are many reasons to verify your site with Google and here’s a list of some of the more popular reasons:

Why should I verify my website with Google?

  • So you can see the data Google has on your Webmaster tools account
  • Tell Google when your website changes or updates
  • Remove site pages from Google Search results
  • Specify to Google how your website should be indexed
  • Set a specific geographic region your website targets
  • Request a crawl rate change

Add other site owners to share your website’s data

How to verify your website with Google by uploading a file

The easiest and quickest method to verifying your website with Google is uploading a file that they provide. The file can be easily uploaded via file manager in cPanel.

  1. Log into Google Webmaster Tools and download the file for HTML verification
google_verification_1
 
  1. Log into cPanel
  2. Go to File Manager in the Files section.
     
  3. Go to the domains root folder (if this is your main domain it will be your public_html folder)
  4. Click “Upload” and upload the HTML file you downloaded from Google
  5. Once the file has uploaded. Go back to the page you downloaded the HTML file from in Google Webmaster Tools and click “Verify
google_verification_4
 

Important! If Google does not find your HTML file you may need to check your DNS. Your domain may not be pointing to our server or you may need to use a different method to verify.

If you need further assistance please feel free to ask a question on our support center.

Carrie Smaha
Carrie Smaha Senior Manager Marketing Operations

Carrie enjoys working on demand generation and product marketing projects that tap into multi-touch campaign design, technical SEO, content marketing, software design, and business operations.

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24 thoughts on “Verifying your website with Google

  1. I LOVE YOU, whoever put this together. I am not good at all with this back end stuff and the step by step was perfect, perfect. thank you!

  2. I have uploaded the html file to one of my website and it was verified . The second website and trying to verify is not going . What could be wrong and secondly. how many websites can I verify?

    1. Make sure that you have a verification code for EACH website. You can’t use the verification code from one site to another.

  3. Hello. Please if there are variations to my website for instance the website, blog etc, is one verification on the main website sufficient for all subdomains?

    Thanks

    1. Verification requirements will depend on the application you’re running. You may need to check with the developer or associated documentation.

  4. I managed to upload, but now I have the html code and details at the very top of my home page!! Cannot see how to remove it?

    1. Reg, it sounds like something may have gone wrong, or your content management system( CMS ) is inadvertently pulling the code from your ‘google********.html’ file. I would recommend removing the file that you uploaded, downloading a new copy, and trying again. If the issue persists you may wish to speak with your web developer.

  5. I really appreciate your step-by-step tutorials, which often include screen captures. They are so dummy-proof, and I love them!! Thanks and keep up the great work!

  6. Thank you, this was so helpful.

    Finally somebody who´s not just repeating what´s already written in the google webmaster tool and finally telling me where to upload this ***** file 🙂 🙂

    Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you 🙂

  7. Thank you for the step by step instructions.  For once – something EASY TO FOLLOW! I have been going crazy trying to understand the verification process & Google+!

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