Problems activating domain aliases on Google Apps

Last Updated Tuesday, July 19, 2011 12:44 AM


By: Chris Hammond

So as most of you know, I have a domain problem, it’s a Godaddy caused addiction really. I don’t consider it a problem, but some of you might.

Anyways, that problem, led me to another problem. I was trying to add a Domain Alias to my Google Apps account, which I use for the email system on the primary websites that I manage. The problem I ran into though was I had a domain name that google was telling me I needed to Activate.

In order to activate the domain alias, I needed to verify the domain. The problem was, I verified the domain, multiple times, using multiple methods, and no matter what I did I still couldn’t activate the domain name. I even went so far as to add another domain alias to my account to see if I could get that one working. Same problem, I could verify it, and it showed up in the history as verified, but if I tried to activate it wouldn’t do anything.

After searching around on the internet for an hour or so I finally stumbled across a forum post that helped point me in the right direction. Basically, the problem was due to google’s multiple account login. I was signed in to both my Gmail account, and my Christoc.com email account, and for some reason that hosed things.

I had to go in and sign out of both accounts. Then login again with my Christoc.com account, click on Manage Domain, then I was able to go through the verification process. Voila, everything is working again!

Initially I did searches for all sorts of things. I assumed I was running into a domain alias limitation on Google Apps, meaning you could only have so many domain aliases attached to an account. That wasn’t the case, though I am sure there has to be a limit in there somewhere. I’m using the free Google Apps accounts, not the business account at this point.

Recent Comments
Thanks! This was a lot of help
Posted By: M. W. on Tuesday, August 09, 2011 2:23 PM
Thanks for the tip of multiple logins! I'd found another post that said it had something to do with the Next Gen Dashboard, but that didn't fix the issue, this did!
Posted By: Mike W on Thursday, October 20, 2011 4:30 AM
I had the exact same problem, and used the exact same solution ;). Well, of course for different domain names. What it most specifically appeared to be related to was that I was logged into Webmaster Tools with one account, and into Apps management with another account. For those struggling with activation as well: Keep an eye on the top right corner of your screen, and make sure that in every step of the domain verification process it says the same email address/username.
Posted By: Wouter Vliet on Monday, October 31, 2011 4:57 PM