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I maintain a personal website, created through Google Sites, which is primarily used to host samples of my writing. The site has a custom domain. Aside from just having a writing archive, though, ...
#1: Initial revision
by
Mithical
·
2025-04-04T09:12:44Z (about 20 hours ago)
Can I verify myself on Mastodon using a Google Site with a custom domain?
I maintain [a personal website](https://www.superplane39.com/), created through Google Sites, which is primarily used to host samples of my writing. The site has a custom domain. Aside from just having a writing archive, though, I also have links to profiles of mine from across the web - including to my profile on Mastodon. Now, given that Mastodon's verification system requires having a personal domain that you can link to your profile from, I figured that I could just easily verify myself (because why not). Mastodon requires that somewhere on your website, you need to embed a link to your profile with `rel="me"`. Now, by default, Google Sites turns links into a Google redirect (i.e. it doesn't link directly to the target page, but links to `google.com/url?=linkwithatracker` instead. If you embed a link within HTML, though, it does link directly to the page that you want. So I embedded a link to my Mastodon profile through the HTML, using the format of `<a rel="me" href="https://mastodon.social/@superplane39">`. Unfortunately... that didn't work. I tried both with linking an image and just with text, neither of which was successful. My suspicion is that Google Sites is simply stripping the `rel="me"` from the link despite having a custom domain. Is there any way I can verify myself on Mastodon via a Google Site with a custom domain, or am I stuck unverified until/unless I swap to a different method of building the site?