shadowoperatorI do plan to contact Google about these things as well a little later tonight, but I've been working pretty much round the clock on it except for a few breaks to answer e-mail, and I was hoping that maybe you could add some insight as to the problems I'm having from your perspective. First I should point out that I've tried to follow the instructions you provide to the letter (the ones in http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmasters-tools/), and the problems are numerous. (1) Firstly, the Google site remembered my attempts to put the code through, and now they open with my website address already there, saying "this hasn't been verified yet, verify now," so that it no longer makes any sense to hit (after that) the "Add a site" button. I've tried every button they have, even the "add a site," but none of them lead to successful results. (2) Here's the biggie, I suspect: your site rules say to click on the "alternate methods" tab, but under that tab Google only has "1. HTML file upload 2.Google Analytics 3. Domain name provider. None of those are what you told me to select. The thing you did tell me to select in your instructions, the "meta tag" option, under their system is listed in "recommended method". The weird thing was (though I know you may find this hard to believe, since this happened in the middle of the night when I was working on the site), once or twice the two terms "alternate" and "recommended" switched around so that they were the way they were supposed to be, as if they were working on the site while i was, so something. But it happened so fast that I didn't have time to make it work for me before it changed back to the (wrong) way it had been. I swear I'm pretty sure I wasn't imagining things. Maybe it was some glitch. (3) Google wants the meta tag to be copied in its entirety and put in the head of the home page of the website. When I tried to get an answer from them earlier, they responded that I must have been doing it wrong. But if there isn't a consistent standard of how to do it, how can anyone do it right? (4)I tried about 100 (it seems) different combinations of copying with the <> and without, with the /> and the " " and every way it looked as if you mean only the content value portion of the meta tag to be copied, but even when I copied it out by typing it into the WordPress.com box on the Tools page symbol by symbol by hand (per timethief's 2010 suggestion on this issue--cf. Feb. 15, 2010l, 4:21 p.m.) and got it all right according to the portion of the code it looked like you wanted, Google still refused to verify it. Nor would it work when just to see if it would I DID try their whole blasted meta tag. (5) I did it so many times that I'm wondering if I possibly got caught in something Google called an infinite loop, like the one they described as being a risk of their uploaded stuff too many times (I didn't try that one all the way, but cleared the upload from my computer files without trying to download it to WordPress.com, once I was sure that wasn't what was wanted. I'm so, so sorry to go on for so long, but I thought that maybe if I addressed as many of the issues I encountered as I could, someone could tell me whether I really need to do this in order to get more traffic to my site, or whether I should just rely on my ability to do my blogsite right now. Thanks so much to anyone who can help, and I will get back to Google with this same information as soon as I take a much-needed break from the computer (though they respond a little more slowly). Has anyone ever gotten this to work, and can they tell me what I'm doing wrong or come up with a suggestion? I hope so. Thanks.
The blog I need help with is creativeshadows.wordpress.com.
