Using Redirection trick for Sitemap Verification = Bad

Reaper-X | Dec, 7 2006 No Comment Related Posts Share RSS Feed

It seems i made a mistake by writing about some redirection trick to fool Google Sitemap Verification before (just in case someone read it) .. because if you’re doing this, everyone that has Google Sitemap account will be able to see how is your site doing in Google via their sitemap page and in this case you can see what queries goes to your site, your search engine position, etc (the other part is not that important .. but i think it’s not quite important at all if your site is just a small site)

Other than that, if you feel that you’re not using some sort of redirection trick, make sure your server return the correct HTTP Status Code 404 (Not Found) when someone try to locate unexistent files on your server. Because if your server returning 200 (Correct) Status Code, someone could add your site to their sitemap account and can verify it by choosing the upload file method

Note: Site on Screenshot taken from daria.be hosted wordpress account provided by drmike a wordpress forums moderator.. because i was hosted at daria.be before moved to a self hosted blog and i remember drmike saying something about this before (actually he is the one that have the original idea of using this trick so i try to use it too)