> And like most Forums systems, this is not the only thread on this
> problem.
> So even if John or anyone else at Google does come here and post the
> problem and/or a message when it's resolved, this is a lousy way to
> communicate it if Google is trying to reach the most users
> On Mar 28, 3:19 pm, Joe_B wrote:
> > Agreed. But JohnMu did post first... maybe you didn't see it?
> > On Mar 28, 2:04 pm, $e0Guy wrote:
> > > DEAR GOOGLE
> > > When you are aware of these problems it would be respectful of your
> > > users to post a BIG, BOLD notice on the webmaster tools dashboard so
> > > you don't cause your users to lose precious hours trying to fix
> > > something that is GOOGLE's problem!
> > > My team goes live with many sites each month - we just added six new
> > > sites to the system and half of them had the "can't verify" problem!
> > > Because we didn't know it was a Google issue, I tasked the resolution
> > > of this to our System Administrator and our Lead Engineer.
> > > Care to reimburse us the money that cost us?
> > > On Mar 27, 11:14 am, JohnMu wrote:
> > > > Hi everyone!
> > > > I just wanted to give a short heads-up that we're aware of the issue
> > > > with site verification in Webmaster Tools. The team is working on it,
> > > > so you should all be able to take a deeper look into your site's
> > > > indexing through Webmaster Tools soon!
> > > > If your site was unverified, it will generally have no impact on any
> > > > settings or statistics in your account. They will all be back once
> > > > your site is re-verified.
> > > > I'm sorry for the disruption and hope to see you all in our chat
> > > > tomorrow!
I see mention that it may actually be a problem not related to Google;
how does one determine that? i.e. to find out the DNS is fine as the
sites appear to be working fine.
> > > > Recursive Queries I could use the nameservers listed below to performe
> > > > recursive queries. It may be that I am wrong but the chances of that
> > > > are low. You should not have nameservers that allow recursive queries
> > > > as this will allow almost anyone to use your nameservers and can cause
> > > > problems. Problem record(s) are:
> > > > 71.18.216.3
> > > > 71.18.255.99
> > > > On Mar 28, 3:59 pm, Maria3a wrote:
> > > > > Hi John,
> > > > > I gather I'm having the same problem too.. Everything was fine
> > > > > yesterday, but today I get the message that the site/domain cannot be
> > > > > verified..
> > > > > domain is:
> > > > > glanmore.org
> > > > > re: verification issues - and I've added the verification meta tag
> > > > > in.. 3 times :-) but it still won't verify. I did the html
> > > > > verfication page as well - it didn't work.. (I've deleted it since).
> > > > > I ended up calling my webhost (before I came here to this blog) and
> > > > > they say all the servers are correct.. for both domains I have, i.e.,
> > > > > I have another domain hosted by the same company, same DNS servers,
> > > > > and it is fine re: verification at:
> > > > > torchysland.com
> > > > > so, I'm no techie.. and really don't know what to do..
> > > > > On Mar 27, 11:14 am, JohnMu wrote:
> > > > > > Hi everyone!
> > > > > > I just wanted to give a short heads-up that we're aware of the issue
> > > > > > with site verification in Webmaster Tools. The team is working on it,
> > > > > > so you should all be able to take a deeper look into your site's
> > > > > > indexing through Webmaster Tools soon!
> > > > > > If your site was unverified, it will generally have no impact on any
> > > > > > settings or statistics in your account. They will all be back once
> > > > > > your site is re-verified.
> > > > > > I'm sorry for the disruption and hope to see you all in our chat
> > > > > > tomorrow!
> > > > > > John- Hide quoted text -
> > > > > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
Agreed. I was one of probably thousands who spend most of the past
few days talking with my service provider and working on a problem
that I couldn't fix. I must admit I never knew these google forums
existed until I scoured the web trying to find info on the dns
problem!
On Mar 28, 2:24 pm, $e0Guy wrote:
> That's all good and fine that it's posted here in the forums, but for
> those of us who live inside the webmaster tools screens and only come
> here when we are at a last-resort stage (almost never), I don't think
> we should have to come here automatically.
> And how many thousands or tens of thousands of users don't even know
> about the forums?
> So from a customer relations perspective in my opinion, Google would
> be lightyears ahead of the current service curve to post those kind of
> notices right on the dashboard instead of me seeing a default "your
> system has a problem" messages that implies its my company's to deal
> with.
> On Mar 28, 3:19 pm, Joe_B wrote:
> > Agreed. But JohnMu did post first... maybe you didn't see it?
> > On Mar 28, 2:04 pm, $e0Guy wrote:
> > > DEAR GOOGLE
> > > When you are aware of these problems it would be respectful of your
> > > users to post a BIG, BOLD notice on the webmaster tools dashboard so
> > > you don't cause your users to lose precious hours trying to fix
> > > something that is GOOGLE's problem!
> > > My team goes live with many sites each month - we just added six new
> > > sites to the system and half of them had the "can't verify" problem!
> > > Because we didn't know it was a Google issue, I tasked the resolution
> > > of this to our System Administrator and our Lead Engineer.
> > > Care to reimburse us the money that cost us?
> > > On Mar 27, 11:14 am, JohnMu wrote:
> > > > Hi everyone!
> > > > I just wanted to give a short heads-up that we're aware of the issue
> > > > with site verification in Webmaster Tools. The team is working on it,
> > > > so you should all be able to take a deeper look into your site's
> > > > indexing through Webmaster Tools soon!
> > > > If your site was unverified, it will generally have no impact on any
> > > > settings or statistics in your account. They will all be back once
> > > > your site is re-verified.
> > > > I'm sorry for the disruption and hope to see you all in our chat
> > > > tomorrow!
As you may know, we periodically re-check your site to see if the
verification method is still present, so that we know that that site
should remain verified in your account. However, right now our re-
check is fairly sensitive, and if we hit any kind of error on your
site when we're checking for the verification method, it's likely that
we'll mark your site as unverified and you'll need to manually
reverify.
Right now it looks like the verification checker is being extra-
sensitive about DNS-related issues. We're looking into what we can do
on our end, but as webado has pointed out, many of the sites posted in
this thread also have DNS issues--whether minor or major. We'll be
working on making verification more robust, but if you're antsy to get
at your data you might also consider contacting your hoster to double-
check things on their end.
Hope this clarifies things a bit; we'll keep you updated.
> I haven't heard of thousands or tens of thousands of users with this
> problem.
RIGHT! If most people who use the Webmaster Tools system don't know
to check the forums, which most do NOT, and the Google "Message" tab
on the Tools Dashboard says "no messages", then of course you wouldn't
have heard of tens of thousands with the problem.
Have you looked through all of the Googles Groups? There are dozens
of other threads from users all over the place who are reporting the
problem who don't know or think to use this specific group forum.
And as for the vast majority of people having this problem have it NOT
be a Google issue - I don't buy that for a second. The odds of such a
coincidence - people all over the world, all of a sudden, over the
past four days, having the exact same problem, and oh, by the way, at
the same exact time, Google's got a code issue that just happens to be
the cause of this problem for a tiny fraction of us?
Susan
Please don't blame 3rd parties as the primary issue here. My company
maintains over 650 web sites at two co-location facilities split
between four racks. This problem has not arisen with the vast
majority of our sites - but a small number of them, and the DNS
settings for those are the exact same settings as all the rest. Most
of the sites on the server where this small handful of "can't verify"
sites resides don't have this problem.
We've checked, re-checked and re-re-checked our systems and our DNS
settings.
ODDLY enough, for some of our sites, we're now also getting "error"
messages related to some of our sitemap.xml files - where yesterday
one was fine, today it's showing errors. Where one was fine two days
ago, it was showing errors yesterday and by last night it was NOT
showing errors.
And we didn't touch or change anything.
Note about the tone of my posts:
I love Google - I've been managing the SEO and SEM initiative for many
clients for several years and Google is by far the best solution out
there. I oversee a team of SEO consultants and due to the high volume
of business we drive to Google through the AdWords program, we've got
a Google Team assigned to us who are always the most helpful, the most
supportive, and lightyears ahead of what we get from Yahoo's people.
So This isn't about ragging on Google.
It IS about a situation where terrible customer service is giving
Google a black eye. I long for the days when Vanessa was in charge of
the Webmaster arena.
> As you may know, we periodically re-check your site to see if the
> verification method is still present, so that we know that that site
> should remain verified in your account. However, right now our re-
> check is fairly sensitive, and if we hit any kind of error on your
> site when we're checking for the verification method, it's likely that
> we'll mark your site as unverified and you'll need to manually
> reverify.
> Right now it looks like the verification checker is being extra-
> sensitive about DNS-related issues. We're looking into what we can do
> on our end, but as webado has pointed out, many of the sites posted in
> this thread also have DNS issues--whether minor or major. We'll be
> working on making verification more robust, but if you're antsy to get
> at your data you might also consider contacting your hoster to double-
> check things on their end.
> Hope this clarifies things a bit; we'll keep you updated.
The number of users who use Webmaster Tools isn't all that vast as you
seem to think it is.
To put it simply if it had been, we'd be seeing a lot more of them
with all kinds of problems and gripes here.
We do see lots, but there have been maybe only 2-3 dozen with
verification problems of this specific type.
People have verification problems all the time, typically it's all due
to numerous problems with their websites: misconfigured servers,
inability to upload files or modify source code, you name it. You
cannot blame those problems on Google in your wildest dreams.
The last couple of days however there have been a bunch of problems
reported as DNS errors. And most of them indeed turned out to be
actual DNS problems their websites have. All but 1 or 2 that is.
So I offer the possible explanation that Google must be checking dns
more closely lately, probably in order to solve other problems, like
maybe to weed out cloaking, proxies, who knows what.
For my sites I have 2 problems currently: a nightly period of extreme
slowness for my server dues to backups and other draining processes,
so any verification that happens to be attempted at the time will
fail; and a small DNS problem I have acquired with one of my 4
nameservers being lame. This means that it's possible that 1 in 4
attempts may result in an access problem to my sites.
But because I know of those problems and their possible effects, I
don't panic. And I work towards solving them with my hoster. The lame
nameserver will need changing. The slowdowns due to backups are a bit
tougher to fix. I can live with it.
> > I haven't heard of thousands or tens of thousands of users with this
> > problem.
> RIGHT! If most people who use the Webmaster Tools system don't know
> to check the forums, which most do NOT, and the Google "Message" tab
> on the Tools Dashboard says "no messages", then of course you wouldn't
> have heard of tens of thousands with the problem.
> Have you looked through all of the Googles Groups? There are dozens
> of other threads from users all over the place who are reporting the
> problem who don't know or think to use this specific group forum.
> And as for the vast majority of people having this problem have it NOT
> be a Google issue - I don't buy that for a second. The odds of such a
> coincidence - people all over the world, all of a sudden, over the
> past four days, having the exact same problem, and oh, by the way, at
> the same exact time, Google's got a code issue that just happens to be
> the cause of this problem for a tiny fraction of us?
Think about what Webado has mentioned.. (and this is not an area I
know too much about) I think I would inverstigate possible DNS prob on
the site I previously mentioned above:
> The number of users who use Webmaster Tools isn't all that vast as you
> seem to think it is.
> To put it simply if it had been, we'd be seeing a lot more of them
> with all kinds of problems and gripes here.
> We do see lots, but there have been maybe only 2-3 dozen with
> verification problems of this specific type.
> People have verification problems all the time, typically it's all due
> to numerous problems with their websites: misconfigured servers,
> inability to upload files or modify source code, you name it. You
> cannot blame those problems on Google in your wildest dreams.
> The last couple of days however there have been a bunch of problems
> reported as DNS errors. And most of them indeed turned out to be
> actual DNS problems their websites have. All but 1 or 2 that is.
> So I offer the possible explanation that Google must be checking dns
> more closely lately, probably in order to solve other problems, like
> maybe to weed out cloaking, proxies, who knows what.
> For my sites I have 2 problems currently: a nightly period of extreme
> slowness for my server dues to backups and other draining processes,
> so any verification that happens to be attempted at the time will
> fail; and a small DNS problem I have acquired with one of my 4
> nameservers being lame. This means that it's possible that 1 in 4
> attempts may result in an access problem to my sites.
> But because I know of those problems and their possible effects, I
> don't panic. And I work towards solving them with my hoster. The lame
> nameserver will need changing. The slowdowns due to backups are a bit
> tougher to fix. I can live with it.
> On Mar 28, 7:31 pm, $e0Guy wrote:
> > Webado,
> > On Mar 28, 4:00 pm, webado wrote:
> > > I haven't heard of thousands or tens of thousands of users with this
> > > problem.
> > RIGHT! If most people who use the Webmaster Tools system don't know
> > to check the forums, which most do NOT, and the Google "Message" tab
> > on the Tools Dashboard says "no messages", then of course you wouldn't
> > have heard of tens of thousands with the problem.
> > Have you looked through all of the Googles Groups? There are dozens
> > of other threads from users all over the place who are reporting the
> > problem who don't know or think to use this specific group forum.
> > And as for the vast majority of people having this problem have it NOT
> > be a Google issue - I don't buy that for a second. The odds of such a
> > coincidence - people all over the world, all of a sudden, over the
> > past four days, having the exact same problem, and oh, by the way, at
> > the same exact time, Google's got a code issue that just happens to be
> > the cause of this problem for a tiny fraction of us?
> Think about what Webado has mentioned.. (and this is not an area I
> know too much about) I think I would inverstigate possible DNS prob on
> the site I previously mentioned above:
> Is that going to tell me if there is an issue (comes up fine for me
> and may be a tool others may find handy.
> If this is not a good tool.. can someone point me to a better one.
> Thanks all... appreciate the discussion on this.
> Regards
> Simon B
> On Mar 29, 10:54 am, webado wrote:
> > No I'm not kidding.
> > The number of users who use Webmaster Tools isn't all that vast as you
> > seem to think it is.
> > To put it simply if it had been, we'd be seeing a lot more of them
> > with all kinds of problems and gripes here.
> > We do see lots, but there have been maybe only 2-3 dozen with
> > verification problems of this specific type.
> > People have verification problems all the time, typically it's all due
> > to numerous problems with their websites: misconfigured servers,
> > inability to upload files or modify source code, you name it. You
> > cannot blame those problems on Google in your wildest dreams.
> > The last couple of days however there have been a bunch of problems
> > reported as DNS errors. And most of them indeed turned out to be
> > actual DNS problems their websites have. All but 1 or 2 that is.
> > So I offer the possible explanation that Google must be checking dns
> > more closely lately, probably in order to solve other problems, like
> > maybe to weed out cloaking, proxies, who knows what.
> > For my sites I have 2 problems currently: a nightly period of extreme
> > slowness for my server dues to backups and other draining processes,
> > so any verification that happens to be attempted at the time will
> > fail; and a small DNS problem I have acquired with one of my 4
> > nameservers being lame. This means that it's possible that 1 in 4
> > attempts may result in an access problem to my sites.
> > But because I know of those problems and their possible effects, I
> > don't panic. And I work towards solving them with my hoster. The lame
> > nameserver will need changing. The slowdowns due to backups are a bit
> > tougher to fix. I can live with it.
> > On Mar 28, 7:31 pm, $e0Guy wrote:
> > > Webado,
> > > On Mar 28, 4:00 pm, webado wrote:
> > > > I haven't heard of thousands or tens of thousands of users with this
> > > > problem.
> > > RIGHT! If most people who use the Webmaster Tools system don't know
> > > to check the forums, which most do NOT, and the Google "Message" tab
> > > on the Tools Dashboard says "no messages", then of course you wouldn't
> > > have heard of tens of thousands with the problem.
> > > Have you looked through all of the Googles Groups? There are dozens
> > > of other threads from users all over the place who are reporting the
> > > problem who don't know or think to use this specific group forum.
> > > And as for the vast majority of people having this problem have it NOT
> > > be a Google issue - I don't buy that for a second. The odds of such a
> > > coincidence - people all over the world, all of a sudden, over the
> > > past four days, having the exact same problem, and oh, by the way, at
> > > the same exact time, Google's got a code issue that just happens to be
> > > the cause of this problem for a tiny fraction of us?
I'm not looking to get into an argument here. Many people who use the
webmaster tools use other forums for communicating - Google groups
other than the one specifically set up for them to use. There are
threads this week popping up all over the net at places like
webmasteerworld.com, drupal.org, and who knows where else, in places
buried beyond where you seem to think they should be doing the
communicating.
Many more don't even know about the forums at all. It's a statistical
fact in business that for every complaint registered a business owner
can typically expect that an exponential number of other people have a
similar problem who do not report it or who report it elsewhere so
that the owner does not directly find out.
Most of those who encounter problems with a business service never
report it, but tell their friends and co-workers and business
associates what a terrible experience they had.
It's only a fraction of real users who would even consider coming to
this specific forum to report a problem.
Unless of course you work at Google and are saying here that the
webmaster tools system is only used by a few hundred people worldwide.
