Google Sites and Bing’s webmaster tools

26 Dec 2009 - Dave

I had a problem authenticating www.netsnbytes.com to the Bing webmaster tools.  netsnbytes.com is hosted on Google Sites, which was JotSpot.  JotSpot is a wiki.

In order to add a site to webmaster tools either upload the file to the root directory or place a special meta tag between the HTML tags.  Since Google Sites is a wiki there is no root directory and there is no access to the HTML HEAD section.

The solution is logical.  Upload the xml authentication file from Bing.

1. Login to Bing’s webmaster tools and browse to the Site List
2. Click the Add a site button
3. Enter the web address to the Google Sites page (there is no sitemap)
4. Click Submit
5. Use the link Download XML Verification file to download ‘LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml’
6. Leave the Bing webmaster form open for now.
7. Login to edit the Google Site
8. Select More Actions > Manage site
9. Under Site Content on the left select Attachments
10. Click the Upload button
11. Browse to where you downloaded LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml
12. Click the Upload button
13. Return to the open Bing webmaster form
14. Click the Return to Site List button
15. The Google Site should authenticate

Bing doesn’t like the long Google url’s to Sites.  You can use Web Address Mapping at More Actions/Manage site/Site Settings/General to map to a domain.  Of course you must have the domain to do this.

You can use these steps for Yahoo’s webmaster tools with some changes.