How to submit your Joomla site at Google Webmaster tools?

Errors during the verification process

Google Webmaster Tools allow you to submit all your links (URLs) to the Google index and get detailed statistics about the visibility of your web pages on Google.com. To get started, please add the URL of your site here. You'll start to see the data about your site right away.

If you have problems during the verification process of your website (e.g. this might happen if you use Search Engine Friendly URLs for your Joomla site), and encounter errors saying:

"We've detected that your server returns a status of 200 (found successfully) for pages that don't exist. We can't verify sites with this configuration because it would enable anyone to verify ownership of your site."

Please, follow the instructions below:

Step 1. You can try out the "meta tag" verification method. You may want to check the following URL for more information: How do I verify my site by adding a meta tag to my site's home page?

Step 2. The robot.txt file could be missing or with incorrect name and this could cause the issue that you have experienced. You may want to check the following URL for more information: 404 (Not found)

Please note that this issue could be also caused if you try to registrar one website for few different domain/subdomain names. Please make sure that this is not the reason that caused this issue.

You may also check the following URL for more details information about Google: We've detected that your server returns a status of 200 (found successfully) for pages that don't exist.

In case you use Search Engine Friendly URLs, the problem might be caused by the following:

Step 1. A rewrite rule that is rewriting the URLs for 404 pages.

Solution: Please, move (rename) your .htaccess file for a second and try to verify your site with the file method again. Then return (change) .htaccess back to its normal state.

Step 2. A custom 404 page which using the apache software error pages is actually displayed with 200 OK status.

Solution: Please, remove the "404 custom page" and try to verify your site using the file method again.

You can check SiteGround Mambo tutorial for further reference.