🧭 Overview
Before Search Atlas can fully analyse and manage your website, it needs to confirm you own it. This is done by adding a verification tag to your website's <head> section. If ownership verification still fails after adding the tag, this guide explains what to check on your end — and what to have ready if the issue requires escalation to our support team for a backend fix.
⚙️ How Verification Works
Search Atlas generates a unique meta tag for your website. You add this tag inside the <head> element of your homepage's HTML. Search Atlas then crawls your homepage and looks for that exact tag. If it finds the tag, ownership is confirmed. If it does not, verification fails.
🛠️ Common Things to Check First
- Copy the tag exactly as provided. Open Search Atlas, navigate to the website verification area, and copy the full meta tag. Even a single extra space or missing character can cause the check to fail.
- Confirm the tag is inside
<head>, not<body>. The tag must appear between the opening<head>and closing</head>tags of your homepage. Tags placed in the body or footer are not detected. - Check that it is on the correct page. Verification only checks your root domain homepage (for example, https://yoursite.com). If your tag is on a sub-page or a staging URL, it will not be found.
- Confirm the page is publicly accessible. Search Atlas cannot crawl pages that are behind a login, password protection, or a maintenance-mode screen. Temporarily disable any access restrictions and retry.
📋 What to Have Ready When Escalating
If you have checked all of the above and verification still fails, the issue may require a backend action from our team. When you reach out, please have the following ready so we can resolve it as quickly as possible:
- The exact website URL you are trying to verify (your root domain homepage)
- The project name in Search Atlas where the verification is set up
- A screenshot or copy of the verification tag as it currently appears in your page's HTML source
- Any error message displayed on screen, including the exact wording
- The date and time you last attempted verification
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.