On this page
- How do I know which method is right for me?
- About automatic online shop verification
- Frequently asked questions
Verifying and claiming your shop's website is important when you set up your Merchant Centre account. You can verify your website by using your e-commerce platform, through email verification, by adding an HTML tag or file to your site, or through Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics. In most cases, you will only have to verify your website once.
Troubleshoot your website verification
How do I know which method is right for me?
Use email verification if:
You can receive a code to an email address that's associated with your site.
Use your e-commerce platform if:
Your website is hosted by a third-party e-commerce platform. There may be suggested options to verify your website provided by the platform. Check with your platform for more information.
Add an HTML tag or file if:
You can add HTML code to the index page on the site that you want to verify, or you can add new files to the server behind the site that you want to verify.
Use Google Tag Manager if:
You're an account-level administrator for Google Tag Manager.
Use Google Analytics if:
You have administrator access to a Google Analytics account that's already linked to the site that you want to verify. This method might not work if you use a third-party platform (such as Shopify). For those accounts, we recommend using an HTML tag to verify your site. You may also need to remove any 'www' from the website address if verification is failing.
About automatic online shop verification
When Google already has the information that it needs to verify your online shop (e.g. if you use other Google products such as Google Analytics on your website), the verification is done automatically. If this happens, you'll get a notification in Merchant Centre that your online shop was automatically verified during the account setup process after you've entered your online shop address.
You may also receive an email from Search Console, a Google tool, to let you know that Merchant Centre has created an account for you. Merchant Centre verifies your site through Search Console. If you have trouble with automatic verification, ensure that the correct website is linked to your other Google products like Google Analytics.
Frequently asked questions
What do 'verify' and 'claim' mean?
Verify: When you verify your website, you let Google know that you're the website owner. You're the website owner if you can make edits to your website content. If you're not the website owner, you'll need to work together with your website owner or administrator to verify the website.
Claim: When you claim your website address, you create a link between your website address and Merchant Centre account. Linking your website address and your Merchant Centre account reserves the website address for use with your account exclusively.
What if I need someone else in my business to complete this step for me?
During the verification process, you can invite someone to help out with this step. You can add them as a user in Merchant Centre or send them the instructions for website verification.
If a user on my account has previously verified my website for use with other Google products, such as Search Console, do I have to do this step again?
No, you only need to complete this process once. Your website will be recognised as verified if any of your users are verified owners of the website in the Search Console. In this case, you can skip to the claiming step.
I wasn't asked to verify or claim my website. What happened?
Sometimes, Google already has the information that it needs to verify your site (e.g. if you use Google Analytics on your site). In this case, the process happens automatically after you enter your website's address on the 'Business information' screen and select Continue. If you're still experiencing issues, try removing the 's' from the 'https' in your website address, if applicable.