Just a heads-up for anyone who uses Google Webmaster Tools. This morning at work, I had an email from the marketing department wondering why a bunch of Merchant Center feeds had failed. It turned out that, for some reason, Google had managed to lose the verification for all the domains to which this applied.

Curious, I logged in to my own Webmaster Tools account (my personal one, which covers this site as well as the others I run), and, lo and behold, the same had happened. It’s not such an issue on my personal domains as it is at work, since I’m not selling anything, but it’s still irritating.

So if anyone else is using Webmaster Tools, I’d suggest checking your site verification. That’s particularly important if you’re using Webmaster Tools for SEO purposes via the Sitemaps facility, or if you’re using Merchant Center or any other Google feed which relies on verification.

I’d be interested to know, too, how many other people have seen the same issue. When my colleague phoned Google about the company sites, they hmm’d a bit and didn’t exactly admit to there being a problem, but it seems too much of a coincidence that it happened on my own account at the same time. Has anyone else seen the same thing?