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Google is emailing users to verify their sites in Google Search Console. The issue is that this is going to people who do not have any way of verifying those sites because they are not the site owner.
Google began sending out these marketing emails a couple of weeks ago. Those were sent out accurately. But this new batch of emails asking folks to verify their sites in Search Console seem to be a mistake.
Marie Haynes said on Twitter "I don't even recognize this site!" She added "now I see that they've missed the first 3 letters of the domain name as well." Barry Adams said on Twitter "Got three such GSC emails for domain names where the first letter of the domain is missing. Definitely a bug."
Here are some tweets about this bug:
OH, this makes sense now. I was like, "I don't even recognize this site!" But now I see that they've missed the first 3 letters of the domain name as well.
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) January 27, 2021
LOL! pic.twitter.com/asL10MSw6Y
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) January 27, 2021
They seem to be missing the first character of the domain names. At least, that's what I noticed
— Roald Craenen (@Roaldcraenen) January 27, 2021
Getting a few weird ones like these:
— Micah Fisher-Kirshner (@micahfk) January 27, 2021
e.[domain].com
wn.[domain].com
None of which are in Google's index of course... ah, #SEO https://t.co/uwQNeXOhQw
I assume no real harm is done because it is not like they can verify the site in Search Console. But this is just a confusing bug.
Google is aware of the bug and has passed it to the right people:
Thanks -- passed it on to the team here.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 27, 2021
Thanks -- I'll pass it on.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 27, 2021
The issue was that they sent it to a cut off version of domain names they do have access to. Here is more from John Mueller of Google:
That's a bug from our side, sorry. A part of the domain name got cut off in the email unfortunately. I'd check whether it's still relevant, and perhaps add the missing part of the site (or the domain).
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 27, 2021
That sounds legitimate. We unfortunately had a bug with a small set of sites in how we included the domain name in the message. The rest of the message should still be relevant though. Sorry about the confusion!
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 27, 2021
The rest of the message remains relevant for those sites. We've paused the messages, but some may still be underway. We're sorry about the confusion this has caused. pic.twitter.com/ou65PHWhwd
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) January 27, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
