Google Search Console verification error - May 2019

Technical Q&A
1

Greetings!

I am trying to add a custom domain name https://www.dinneronthetable.com.au today to Google Search Console but experiencing issues using HTML tag verification. The error message from Google Search console is

The connection to your server timed out.
Please fix your implementation and reverify, or use another verification method.

I can access the store and the backend, and can see the meta tag required for verification, properly inserted. Somehow Google robots have problem accessing the website.

I have contacted Shopify support team, who assured the problem is not with Shopify, and asked me to contact Google. It is already Friday night in Australia. I can imagine Google will kick the ball back, and ask me to contact Shopify instead.

I will try DNS verification next week, but do have concerns Google robots may not always be able to crawl the website. Or is it just affecting Aussie domains/custom domains?

Is there someone else experiencing issues with Google Search Console verification at the moment? How did you solve the problem? Did you have issues with Google indexing your web pages?

I had to solve two humiliating reCaptchas to ask this question here. Hopefully someone can shed some light. thank you.
Oliver

1 Like
2

Hi Olivergm,

I’m having exactly the same problem, did you find a fix?

Another Aussie site too!

3

Hi David,

Sorry for this late response. Have you tried verifying domain ownership by DNS method? I had no problem with this method.
I believe something is wrong with Shopify/automatic CloudFlare proxy setting affecting Aussie domains. Since this is beyond our control, don’t waste time trying to solve the problem.

1 Like
4

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for your response, I agree there is something wrong as whichever option I try they all “time out”.

I did try adding a txt record to the DNS but that doesn’t seem to work for me either, can you give me the process you used to make it work, please.

Again thanks for your help

Dave

5

Why would they try a method that they probably have no access to? Most Shopify users are using Shopify specifically because they don’t have the level of expertise required to deal with DNS records.