Skip to main content

Verifying Ownership Of Your Site To Yahoo Site Explorer

As a web master (blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity which is almost as time consuming. You will be constantly connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog.

For links to some web sites, you'll not use email, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though, with blogs you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

One of the most important web sites that you can add your blog to is Yahoo Site Explorer, which provides you the web site (blog) owner the ability to monitor and tune the relationship between your web site (blog) and the Yahoo Search Engine. When you add your web site to YSE, you add a file of specific name and content, to the root. When you add your blog, you can't do that, so you add a record of specific content - a meta record - to the template.

This meta record, which provides your verification of ownership to Yahoo Site Explorer, may be one of the most important single lines of code in the template. Add this with care.
  1. First, and always, backup the template for the blog.
  2. Sign in to your Yahoo account (Yes, here, too, you have to sign in! And you will need a Yahoo account, too!)
  3. You start from Yahoo Site Explorer - My Sites.
  4. Under "My Sites", you'll see the "Add My Site" button.
  5. Paste or type the URL of the blog into the box to the left of "Add My Site".
  6. Hit "Add My Site".
  7. Now below the box where you added the URL, you'll have a 1 line entry for the blog.
  8. Click on the URL of the blog.
  9. This will take you to "Summary" for the blog URL. Above that you'll have a link "Authentication". Click on "Authentication".
  10. This will take you to "Site Explorer - Authentication".
  11. Below "How would you like to authenticate your site?", you'll find the choice "By adding a META tag to my home page.", and the meta record. Copy the meta record.
  12. You'll take the record as provided, and reformat it slightly. Here's what they provide.
    <META name="y_key" content="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx">
    

    Here's what I use.
    <meta content='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' name='y_key'/>
    
  13. In another tab or window, open the template editor window, for the blog.
  14. Copy the record into the template for your blog, just below the record added for Google Webmaster Tools verification.
  15. Save the template.
  16. Back in the Yahoo Site Explorer window, and just below the meta record that you copied, find and click on the link "Ready to Authenticate".
  17. You'll now see "Your site is pending authentication.".
  18. Take a deep breath, and find and click on the link "My Sites"
  19. You're now back at "Yahoo Site Explorer - My Sites".
  20. Below "My Sites", you'll have a one line entry for the blog, and hopefully, "Active".
  21. And again, backup the template for the blog. Save both backups.

Having verified ownership of your site, you now can add a feed, or use the other features of Yahoo Site Explorer.
>> Top

Comments

Unknown said…
I was having trouble doing this. Your solution worked perfectly. Thanks
Unknown said…
Thank you so much. I was tearing my hair out trying to follow the other tutorials, but yours worked fine for me.
Unknown said…
This is not working for me...

http://alittlepocketchange.blogspot.com/
is my blog, and the exact link i provided Yahoo!
i reformatted it like you said, but i'm unsure if i placed it correctly, and it did not work...any suggestions to try? i'm a little html noob, so i'm lost...but i'm trying.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Krissy,

This would be a good discussion for in BHF: How Do I?, where we can go over each detail, in a dialogue.

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".