Prove your site is yours

Google won’t show you how your site is doing until you prove the site is yours. Same for Bing, Meta and the others. They all hand you a short verification code, and they need to find it on your pages.

In Bailey you paste that code once, in a field. That’s the whole thing.

Connect Google Search Console

1. In Google Search Console, add your site’s address and choose the URL prefix method.

2. Google offers several ways to prove it. Pick HTML tag — the one that shows you a line starting with <meta name="google-site-verification".

   Not the file

   Google also offers an HTML file to download and upload. Don’t take that one — Bailey doesn’t need it, and it’s the option that breaks later. See below.

3. Press Copy next to the tag Google shows you.

4. In Bailey, open your project, scroll to Search engines, and paste it into Google Search Console. You can paste the whole tag or just the code — both work.

5. Press Save.

6. Go back to Google and press Verify.

That’s it. Google finds the proof on your homepage and unlocks your data — it usually takes a few seconds.

Why there is no file to upload

Most hosts ask you to drop a small file (something like google1a2b3c.html) at the root of your site. It works — right up until you publish your site again.

On Bailey, every publish is a version: a dated snapshot of the files you dropped. A verification file dropped into one version isn’t in the next one, so your next update quietly removes it, and Google un-verifies your site a few days later. Nothing warns you, and nothing connects the two events.

The code you paste here isn’t a file. It belongs to your address, not to a version — so it’s on every page, through every publish, every rollback, and every change of tool. There’s nothing to remember.

If you already uploaded the file

It still works, and you can leave it. Bailey serves it exactly as Google wrote it. Just keep in mind it will disappear the next time you publish without it — which is why pasting the code is the safer route.

Other services

Under Other services you’ll find the same field for:

• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Facebook / Meta (domain verification)
• Pinterest
• Yandex

They work identically: copy what the service shows you, paste, save, then press their Verify button. You can connect as many as you like — they don’t interfere with each other.

If it says “not verified”

A few things worth checking, in order:

• Did you press Save? The button stays greyed out until you change something, and active once you’ve pasted.
• Are you verifying the right address? If your site answers on both yourname.sites.trybailey.app and your own domain, verify the one you actually gave the service. See Use your own domain.
• Is your site published? A project with no version online has no page to read the proof from. Publish first, verify after.
• Is your site password-protected or organization-only? Then Google can’t open it at all. A site behind a password can’t be verified, and shouldn’t be in Search Console anyway. See Password-protect a site.

Removing a proof

Clear the field and press Save. The tag disappears from your pages at the next page load.

Worth knowing: the service you disconnect usually keeps its own record for a while, then drops your site when it next checks. If you’re moving a site somewhere else, remove the proof here and re-verify there.