Google Updates Webmaster Tools Verification Feature

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced they have updated the verification tool to make it easier for webmasters to verify their sites. There are three main changes: (1) New look for HTML file verification process: (2) If you use the META Tag verification option and you change your email address tied to that Google account, […]

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced they have updated the verification tool to make it easier for webmasters to verify their sites. There are three main changes:

(1) New look for HTML file verification process:

Google Webmaster Tools Verification

(2) If you use the META Tag verification option and you change your email address tied to that Google account, the sites will now still remain verified.

(3) If you use the HTML file verification option, you no longer need to make sure your 404 pages actually return a 404 server status code.

With this update, some publishing tools no longer have the ability to verify their sites with Google Webmaster Tools, one example is Google Sites. Google is aware of this and working on addressing the issue.


Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.


About the Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.