Google doesn't love me, and I thought we were tight.

[Iona]

hi all,

I am trying to verify my ownership of my site to Google's webmaster tools, and received this error from Google:

We've detected that your server returns a status of 200 (found successfully) for pages that don't exist.

We've detected that your server returns a status of 200 (found successfully) for pages that don't exist. We can't verify sites with this configuration because it would enable anyone to verify ownership of your site. You can try our meta tag verification method or change your server's configuration.

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 (found) in the header of 404 (not found) 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. 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.

How do I correct this, so that Our Supreme Overlords at Google will verify my account?

Thanks for any help. Really, JaguarPC is a fine host, but the real magic is in the forums.

[Ron]

How are you handling missing pages? Do you have a custom 404 page? Do you have rewrite rules in .htaccess?

[jason]

Are you using a CMS system of some time? If so, which one?

--Jason

[Tcarter]

This also happened to me on a personal website, you should be able to confirm your website by adding the META Tag vs uploading the file.

This is generally caused by modifying your .htaccess file.