Verify your Square Online site with search engines
About verifying your website
Verifying your website with search engines like Google is a great way to get your site indexed into their search results. When your site is indexed, this means that your site has a chance to appear in search results when people search certain keywords.
Verifying your site with Google Search Console gives you access to reports about your site’s visibility in search results, and ensures that your site is indexed by Google on a faster and more regular basis.
Before you begin
Since search engines aren't updated in real time, their search results won't immediately display any recent changes you've made to your SEO details. It can take anywhere between a few days to several weeks for a change to be reflected in search engine results. For more information, review our Ultimate SEO Guide.
This article offers information to verify your site with Google. To verify your site with other search engines, visit that search engine’s support site.
Step 1: Choose a property type
To get started, sign in at Google Search Console if you already have a Google account, or create a new Google account if you don’t already have one. Any Google account email address (like Gmail or Google Workspace) allows you to sign in.
You have two property type options: domain and URL prefix. Follow the steps needed depending on your property type.
Use this property type if you own your custom domain name. This option covers all variations of your domain, including any subdomains.
To verify ownership of a domain property, you’ll need to create a TXT record for the domain using the value Google provides. Learn how to manage records for Square Online domains if Square hosts your domain and you’d like to add a TXT record. If your domain is hosted by a third party and you aren’t sure how to add a TXT record, contact your domain host for assistance.
Use this property type if your website is published to a free subdomain.
Google offers several methods for verifying ownership of a URL prefix property, but the HTML tag method is the simplest.
- Go to Other verification methods, and select HTML tag to expand the panel.
- Copy the code Google provides,
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Sales channels > Online > Settings > Tracking Tools.
- Paste the HTML tag into the header section of your site
- Publish your website.
Step 2: Complete the site verification process
Go back to Google Search Console and select Verify to complete the process.
If you used the domain property type, you may need to wait an hour or two for the DNS records to propagate before completing the verification process.
If everything is correct, you’ll see a message indicating site ownership is verified. If there’s an error, make sure your site is published and you allowed enough time for the DNS records to propagate (TXT record method), then try selecting Verify again. When you see the verification confirmation message, select Go To Property.
Step 3: Add a site map
Open the menu, then select Sitemaps. A sitemap is created automatically for every website hosted at Square. The filename for the sitemap is always "sitemap.xml", so enter that into the Add a new sitemap field and select Submit.