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Site Verification Headaches with Yahoo and Google Sitemaps
September 13, 2006
In the spirit of Doug's most recent post about Google Webmaster Central, I wanted to add a few notes about both it and its Sunnyvale counterpart, Yahoo Site Explorer's recently updated webmaster area.
Yahoo Site Verification. I spent about an hour this morning preparing to verify about 20 sites for a very large client. One thing that's REALLY annoying about Yahoo's site verification process is that each site requires a unique text file - complete with unique filename and unique 16-character text string within the file - uploaded to the root.
Now, of course you can't create all 20 verification files, dump them into an email message, and send them to the client for uploading, because the client won't know what file goes with what site. So I created a folder for each file and zipped all the folders into one Zip archive.
I also added an Excel sheet with columns for the site, filename, and character string, because more than once, I've sent Yahoo authentication files over and over, only to have the recipient complain that the attachment didn't make it through. Apparently, many zealous mail clients look askance at curiously named, 16-byte file attachments. With the Excel file, I had a failsafe record of each verification file's contents in case they needed to be recreated by the client.
I'm sure Yahoo has a reason for giving each user a different authentication filename AND character string for EACH site that needs to be authenticated. I'm just not sure what the reason is.
Contrast this with Google Verification. First, I have to be honest and admit that I'd verified about a half dozen sites through Google before I realized that each time the server spat out an authentication file, it was the exact same file each time. Few people understand that with Google, your unique verification file (tied to your personal Google account) is your backstage pass to any concert you want. You can view the stats for any site that hosts your verification file in its root, and a site can host verfication files for as many people as need access to the stats.
So verify one site, then keep that verification file in a place you'll remember. From then on, you don't need to go through the process of having Google spit out the same info again and again, each time you want to verify a new site. Just upload your file to the root and Verify.
Like Yahoo's verification files, Google's also suffer from Napoleon Complexes - in fact, with no recommended content at all (just unique filenames), email clients are even more suspicious of them, because at 0 bytes, they're infinitely smaller than Yahoo's 16-byte files. While Google doesn't specifically demand that your file contain text, it doesn't discriminate against files that do. So here's a tip: Add some nonsense text to your Google verification file, and I think you'll find it more easily passable through email.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at September 13, 2006 11:34 PM
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