Implementation Webmaster Tools Verification

[buiserik]

Hello all,

I'm having a bit of an issue to get a website verified in Webmaster Tools. The problem is the homepage is set up to automatically redirect visitors to a dedicated country page. The redirect is done server side so the actual html of the homepage is not being loaded at all. The meta verification tag is implemented on that homepage but Google is not able to read it due to the redirect.

Meta Tag verification is actually the only possible way of verification for this client. The file upload does not work due to a rewrite problem, DNS is found too complicated and risky, GA is the same problem as with the Meta Tag.

Any of you have a clever idea? The only thing I can come up with is create a seperate website in webmasters tool for each subdirectory with it's own meta tag verfication set up.

[DirkC]

Hi Erik

With this setup - I fear you will have issues later on as well when trying to optimise the site for SEO (which part of the site will be accessible for the Google bot?)

Rather than for Server Side redirects (based on ip) I would offer first time visitors to "Choose your country" page - and store their choice in a cookie, so they are redirected to the proper site on subsequent visits. As an example of what I mean: http://www.volvocars.com/language-selector. This way you can validate the webmastertools using both GA or HTML file.

If that is not an option, than DNS seems to be the only proper way to do the validation (it is not as complicated as it may seem)

rgds,

Dirk