Hi,<br /><br />I had uploaded a Google sitemap, and was recently trying to "verify" it with a new utility they provided on the Google website. I just had to upload an html file that Google can use to verify my sitemap. This worked fine on a different server/host, but I'm unable to verify on my TotalChoiceHosting domains.<br /><br />The error I get from Google is this:<br />***************<br />We've detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a status of 200 (OK) in the header. <br />this configuration presents a security risk for site verification and therefore, we can't verify your site. If your web server is configured to return a status of 200 in the header of 404 pages, and we enabled you to verify your site with this configuration, others would be able to take advantage of this and verify your site as well. This would allow others to see your site statistics. To ensure that no one can take advantage of this configuration to view statistics to sites they don't own, we only verify sites that return a status of 404 in the header of 404 pages. <br /><br />Please modify your web server configuration to return a status of 404 in the header of 404 pages. Once your web server is configured correctly, try to verify the site again. If your web server is configured this way and you receive this error, click Check Status again and we'll recheck your configuration.<br />***************<br /><br />I added this to my .htaccess file, but still no luck:<br />ErrorDocument 404 <a href="http://*****/" target="_blank">*****/</a><br /><br />Any ideas how to fix this or if it's possible?<br /><br />Thanks for your help.<!--content-->
I'm not sure what you set as the page to be displayed when a 404 error occurs, but it should not include your domain name. From the Apache documentation on the ErrorDocument directive:<br /><!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Note that when you specify an ErrorDocument that points to a remote URL (ie. anything with a method such as "http" in front of it), Apache will send a redirect to the client to tell it where to find the document, even if the document ends up being on the same server. This has several implications, the most important being that the client will not receive the original error status code, but instead will receive a redirect status code. This in turn can confuse web robots and other clients which try to determine if a URL is valid using the status code<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--><br />Your .htaccess file should have something like the following:<br /><!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->ErrorDocument 404 /custom404.html<!--c2--></div><!--ec2--><br />mod_rewrite directives could also cause this issue (I believe), depending on how you set it up (if you're using mod_rewrite at all).<!--content-->
All this time and I had no idea...Removing the domain name worked... thank you David! =)<!--content-->
I'm not sure what you set as the page to be displayed when a 404 error occurs, but it should not include your domain name. From the Apache documentation on the ErrorDocument directive:<br /><!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Note that when you specify an ErrorDocument that points to a remote URL (ie. anything with a method such as "http" in front of it), Apache will send a redirect to the client to tell it where to find the document, even if the document ends up being on the same server. This has several implications, the most important being that the client will not receive the original error status code, but instead will receive a redirect status code. This in turn can confuse web robots and other clients which try to determine if a URL is valid using the status code<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--><br />Your .htaccess file should have something like the following:<br /><!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->ErrorDocument 404 /custom404.html<!--c2--></div><!--ec2--><br />mod_rewrite directives could also cause this issue (I believe), depending on how you set it up (if you're using mod_rewrite at all).<!--content-->
All this time and I had no idea...Removing the domain name worked... thank you David! =)<!--content-->