You can verify ownership of your website with any of these four methods:
Google Search Console (recommended);
DNS record;
HTML file;
HTML tag.
Google Search Console (recommended)
Connect your Google Account and allow access to your search console data to verify your website.
This method is the quickest way to verify multiple websites at once. As long as your website is verified in your Google Search Console, it will be automatically verified in Ahrefs.
Your project must be added in the same mode as it is added to GSC (if you added www.example.com in GSC and example.com in Ahrefs, you’ll get an error.)
DNS record
Add a verification .txt record to your domain's DNS settings to verify your website.
In the DNS settings of your domain, the key/name can either reflect "@" or be kept blank. Check that you added the correct and exact txt record provided. If you had a developer add it, please ask them to check that the .txt record was added correctly.
Verification via this method can sometimes take up to 48 hours to go through due to the time required for DNS propagation. If your ownership remains unverified after a few minutes have passed, please continue setting up your crawl for now and check back a couple of days later.
The record used for site ownership verification must remain on your site. Before each new crawl, we check if ownership is still valid.
HTML file
Download the HTML verification file and upload it to your domain's root folder to verify your website.
Once uploaded, you can check if it was done correctly. The link provided should match the URL of the file.
Verification should be successful if you’re able to see the file when you click on the link provided. If you uploaded the file but aren’t able to see it, please check if there are any caching or update managements in progress on your website that might be interfering with the process.
The file used for site ownership verification must remain on your site. We regularly check to see if ownership is still valid.
HTML Tag
Add the meta tag provided to the <head> section of your website's homepage to verify your website.
Check that the whole tag was entered in the exact format provided and in the <head> section as instructed.
To check if it was done correctly, go to your website’s homepage, right-click and select "View page source", then search (CTRL+F or CMD+F for windows or mac) and enter the full HTML tag. If it gets highlighted, you did it correctly.
Verification should be successful if you’re able to see the HTML tag highlighted when you view your page source. If you uploaded the file but aren’t able to see it, please check if there are any caching or update managements in progress on your website that might be interfering with the process.
The tag used for site ownership verification must remain on your site. We regularly check to see if ownership is still valid.
Other troubleshooting notes
If you tried one method and it didn’t work, feel free to try a different method.
If your ownership verification status shows "Verified" in project settings, but shows "Not Verified" for your current crawl or audit, this indicates that ownership got verified after the crawl started. On the next crawl, we should detect your verification.