I’ve been trying to get everything setup for this new site in Google’s Webmaster Tools.
I submitted my xml sitemap and Google gave me an error “Network unreachable: robots.txt unreachable”. I’m not using a robots.txt file.
Could it be due to the fact that I cannot seem to verify my site?
I tried to verify my site by uploading an html file to my site with a name that Google chose. I can click on the link that Google provides and see that my file is where it should be, but when I tell Google to verify, they tell me they experienced a “temporary problem”, which links to:
“We couldn’t find your verification file. Make sure it is named correctly and is uploaded to the correct location.”
As I said, I already clicked the link that they provided and the file is there. I’ve tried this several times with no success. I mentioned this strange problem at work and was told we experienced the same problem with some of our clients sites, and that verification was successful only by using the Meta tag info. So, I’ll probably end up going that route.
But I’m a curious monkey…
What’s the problem? How can they read a Meta tag inside a file, but not find a file itself? Is anyone else out there experiencing this strange Googleness?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
4 Responses to “Google Verify Site Strangeness”
I was having the same problem with one of my websites.
What finally fixed it is that I renamed my .htaccess file, performed the verify, and then renamed it back. Apparently one of the rewrite rules was interfering with the process.
cool, thanks david. like i said i ended up going the meta tag route instead, which worked. but it’s nice to have another workaround in my pocket next time this happens!
Having the same problem as you with Google. I couldn’t verify my site using the file upload method, so I resorted to using the META tags. That worked fine. But now stage two of my problem, is that I cannot add a SITEMAP to my site cause it keeps returning “Network unreachable: robots.txt unreachable
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit”. It seems that for some reason Google is having a hard time reading the root of my site. I even tried renaming my HTAccess file like David did, but no luck there. Wondering if you’ll end up having the same problem when you try to add a sitemap to your site.
i have SEO urls on my website adn back linked to many directories and i use digital point forums to give medirections on how to get people on my website