Google's John Mueller posted a PSA yesterday, reminding SEOs and developers to verify the host name of cloud providers they are using to host images, videos, and other content. Specifically, you should use a DNS CNAME to the bucket, then verify with DNS with Search Console.
This will give you the ability to track those resources in Search Console.
For example, the image above this article is hosted on images.seroundtable.com - I use AWS to host my images and I use a DNS CNAME to handle the URL so it is on seroundtable.com and I have more control over it. When I first launched this site, AWS didn't support this but now they do.
John wrote on Bluesky how to do this. He wrote:
"If you're using a cloud provider to host images / videos / other content, you can and should verify the host in Search Console, so that you're aware of potential issues that affect Google's crawling & indexing, & Safe Browsing. Use a DNS CNAME to the bucket, then verify with DNS.
Using your own hostname (something like content.your-site.com) means you can verify it in Google Search Console to get crawl errors and malware alerts. You can verify using DNS verification... or just verifying your main domain.
To do this, set up a CNAME entry for your domain name and point at your cloud provider's bucket, eg "content.your-site.com" uses a CNAME for "your-bucket.clodstorage.com" (or "buckets.clodstorage.com"). Also, you will have to update all links in your site (ugh, I know).
You need to update all the links within your site so that users only find your content with your new hostname. For bigger sites, this is a hassle, I know. Search & replace, then double-check by crawling the main sections of your site (all templates, all important URLs).
Caveat: if you need to do this for images, and you care about Image search traffic, know that this will cause fluctuations in Google Images (images are often recrawled slower than web pages and need to be "re-processed" with the new URLs). It'll settle down though.
Bonus: if you use something like "content.your-site.com", you can just verify the main domain with DNS in Search Console, and get all data for your website + the content hosted there in a single property in Search Console.
AND THAT'S NOT ALL. IF YOU ORDER NOW, YOU ALSO RECEIVE the ability to migrate to another cloud storage provider without breaking a sweat. Map the CNAME to the new bucket (if the file URLs remain the same), use redirects (it's your hostname). It's not really your site unless it's on your domain name."
Forum discussion at Bluesky.
