Whenever I would be advocating webmaster tools to my clients, the question of sharing always comes up. Until today, whenever a site had shared ownership, each verified user needed a separate code and verification process. Well, for the sake of all of us, this is not the case any more.
With the latest changes to the verification process, once you are a verified owner of a website, you get access to the Verification Details page (linked from Webmaster Tools or the Verification home page) which will show you information about the site as well display a list of any other verified owners.
At the bottom of the list of owners, you’ll now see a button labeled “Add a user…”. Click that, enter the user’s email address, and that person will instantly become a verified owner for the site! And you can remove that ownership at any time by clicking the “Unverify” link next to the person’s email address on the Details page.
While all of this is truly awesome, just a couple of things to remember:
1. Each website must always have at least one verified owner (verified directly via meta tag or HTML file)
2. If all directly verified owners become unverified, the owners they’ve added may also become unverified.
3. Ownership can only be delegated to people with Google Accounts.
4. Delegate owners will have exactly the same access you. Meaning they can delegate to more people, submit URL Removal requests and manage Sitelinks in Webmaster Tools.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I added new user to one of my site. Its wired they cannot access any information. Though I have verified my site
Thanks
Shovan
Shovan, sometimes the permissions on Google’s side are not working correctly. Under such circumstances, I would create a new account and verify this user separately (basically, repeating the same verification process). The drawback is that you’ll have to keep two verification codes/files on your website. Another option is to try to add them again with a different email address. Hope it works out for you in the end!
Every time I “Add a New Owner” (verified domain, another gmail address), nothing appears in the added Google Webmaster Tools. I take it the domain should be listed in the new account, just like it is in mine? Is anyone able to get this to work?
Do we have similar feature in Bing Web master tool?
Thanks
Boaz
I was looking to see if multiple users can be verified for Bing as well. It doesn’t appear to be the case.
I stand corrected. I just saw this in the Bing site:
“You can verify multiple user accounts by editing the XML file to include the unique verification code for each additional account as a new tag inside the section of the XML file.”