Ad Grant ads may only point at a domain you own and have proved you own. The proof is a small DNS or file change, it takes ten minutes, and it blocks the whole application until it is done — usually because nobody in the organisation knows who controls the DNS.
Why Google asks
The grant funds advertising for your organisation, and every ad must lead to your site. If anyone could point grant ads at any domain, the programme would be trivially abusable. Domain verification is the check that ties the two together.
It also protects you. A verified domain means nobody else can run grant ads to your site.
The three methods
| Method | Best when | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| DNS TXT record | You control DNS. The most robust option | Minutes to a few hours |
| HTML file upload | You can put a file at the site root | Immediate |
| HTML meta tag | You can edit the homepage template | Immediate |
DNS is the recommended one. File and tag methods break when somebody redesigns the site or migrates the CMS, and verification silently lapses.
Never remove the verification afterwards. Google re-checks periodically. A tidy-up that deletes an unfamiliar TXT record, or a site rebuild that drops the meta tag, will un-verify the domain and stop the ads.
The DNS method, step by step
- In Google Search Console (or the verification prompt in your Google account), choose to add
a Domain property and enter your domain without
https://and withoutwww. - Copy the TXT record value it gives you.
- Log into wherever your DNS lives — often the domain registrar, sometimes the host, sometimes Cloudflare.
- Add a TXT record. Name or host:
@(or blank, depending on the provider). Value: the string you copied. TTL: leave the default. - Save, wait a few minutes, then click Verify.
If it fails, wait an hour and retry before changing anything. DNS propagation is the usual cause and impatience creates duplicate records.
Finding who controls your DNS
The genuine blocker for most small organisations. In order of likelihood:
- The domain registrar where the domain was bought.
- The web host, if they were given nameserver control.
- Cloudflare or a similar proxy, if one was ever set up.
- The volunteer or agency who built the site in 2019.
A public WHOIS lookup will name the registrar, which is the thread to pull. While you are in there, add a second person to the registrar account — losing control of a domain is a far larger problem than a failed verification.
Which domain to verify
Verify the domain your ads will point at, and verify it at the domain level rather than for a
single subdomain. A Domain property in Search Console covers example.org,
www.example.org and any subdomain, which saves repeating the exercise.
If your donation platform lives on a separate domain, that one does not need verifying — the ad points at your site, which then links out. Pointing an ad directly at a third-party platform breaches the rule regardless of verification.
When verification lapses
Symptoms: ads stop, or a warning appears in the account, usually after a site migration or a DNS clean-up. The fix is to add the record back. Nothing is lost.
To prevent it, write the verification method into your site documentation, so the next person who rebuilds the site knows the record exists and why. This is the same category of problem as the annual survey: institutional memory, not technique.
A useful side effect
Verifying via Search Console gives you Search Console, which shows what people search before they reach your site organically. That data is directly useful for building the grant's keyword list, and it is free. Do the verification this way rather than by file upload for that reason alone.