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Potential New Verification Process in Google Sitemaps
Posted February 22, 2006

If you subscribe to the SEO Revolution Newsletter, you know that we are very big on Google Sitemaps. One of the big issues for many new webmasters, is getting their XML file validated. The process often times is buggy and doesn’t work for no reason.

Google announced today that they are considering adding an alternate verification option. This option would be an additional choice, and it would not replace the current verification process. If you have already verified your site, you won’t need to do anything new.

This alternate verification process would require that you place a META tag in the section of your home page. This META tag would contain a text string unique to your Sitemaps account and site. Google will provide you with this tag, which would look something like this:

Google would check for this META tag in the first section of the page, before the first section. This is the best method Google could come up with to prove site ownership without requiring the ability to rename files, as some systems are restrictive and do not allow this.

The unique string would be a base-64 encoded SHA-256 hash of a string that is composed of the email address of the owner of the site (for instance, admin@google.com) and the domain name of the site (for instance, google.com).

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