Managing the Verified Sites list

The first thing I suggest you to do is an optional step: find in the main menu the "Verified sites..." item and click on it.

If you administer one or more websites, you probably did set up Google Search Console (GSC) verification code for it, and may be also the similar Bing Webmaster Tools verification code. Did you?
If you didn't you might skip this optional part, you can always do it later. We strongly suggest setting up a Google Search Console account for your site: if you are serious about SEO, it is a gold mine on its own given to you for free.
Why does Visual SEO Studio asks you? It needs an authoritative third party to check whether you do actually administer the site.
Once you are recognized as a site administrator, the software lets you crawl it faster and override some restrictions it otherwise imposes: for example a site administrator can ask to crawl at high speed her own site even if a crawl-delay is set (if present it would otherwise be respected up to two seconds), or to spoof the user-agent, while doing it on someone else's site would be unethical.

You need an active Internet connection now, but hey of course you have it.

Once you click on the "Update list" button the list is updated with the web sites you are an administrator of, recognized by the selected third party.
The list expires after a month, as administration rights could be revoked by the website owner.

Using Google Search Console verification

If you chose the default option "Google Search Console", the program will ask you to grant authorization to access GSC data. It uses Google OAuth2 secure protocol, so the program will never know your Google credentials.

Click on the "Add account..." link, you will be shown the following dialog window:

Window to insert Google Search Console authorization code

Clicking on the "Get Google Authorization Code" link a default browser window will open with the Google authentication page.

Follow the instructions explained in the page How to authorize access to GSC data.

Next time you will chose GSC verification the authorization will be remembered.
You can also switch to another Google account, or insert a new one.

To complete verification, click on the "Update list" button.

Using Bing Webmaster Tools verification

Alternatively you can use a BWT key.
Follow MS instructions on how to get a API Key, then insert it in the proper field and click on "Update list".

Using Visual SEO Studio verification

You cannot use any of the previous two? May be your site is a pre-production staging server on your LAN, not exposed to the Internet?
You can use the "Visual SEO Studio verification".

The way it works is simple: it relies on a specific XML file to be present at the root of your development/pre-production site.
From the Verified Sites window select the "Visual SEO Studio verification" option, and click on the "Save verification file to upload" button.

It generates a file named VisualSEO.SiteAdm.xml

File VisualSEO.SiteAdm.xml

The signature content is your PC hardware signature (you can read/copy yours from Visual SEO -> Help -> About...).
If you want to add the hardware signatures of other PCs that are using Visual SEO Studio, you should edit the XML file manually to add them as well.

Upload the file in the root folder of your dev site.

Then from the Verified Sites window insert the root domain address of the dev site, and then click "Update list".

Note: if your dev site is localhost/127.0.0.1 this is not necessary, it is considered verified implicitely.

See also:

• Video tutorial: Verified Websites

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