Google Site Kit API fail Dreamhost Shared Servers

Hi?@wallerservices,

Thanks for reaching out. We are aware that some users are reporting the same error when trying to connect Site Kit at present. We’ve been doing testing on this, where we were able to recreate the same error but only in cases whereby hosting providers resolve the the Site Kit service domain (sitekit.withgoogle.com) using the services IPv6 address.

From our testing these blocks occur also without using the plugin, when performing ping or cURL checks, again only arising if resolving the domain using IPv6.

If you’re comfortable with cURL commands can you check both the below:
curl -6 -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com
If you are unsure on how to perform this check then you can check with a website admin or your hosting provider. I suspect this check, which ensures IPv6 is used, will result in the same 403 error.

curl -4 -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com
This check may allow you to connect, with a successful 200 error.

Let me know how you get on with the above commands. If you are able to communicate with the second command, an IPv4 check, please share your  Site Health information. You can use this form to share privately if preferred and I can inspect your environment. Please include your hosting provider where requested.

We have checked for any blocks on the Google side for impacted users similar to your own, checking their host IPv6 address. There were no blocks from the IP addressed we checked. In addition, the IPv6 address for the Site Kit service may change, which is why it’s more suitable to perform a check with sitekit.withgoogle.com rather than the IP address. If you wish to include your own server IPv6 address I can also see if we can perform another check on our side.

Note also that for users like you, who were previously impacted, from those who were able to temporarily deactivate IPv6 at host level, they confirmed that after doing so they were able to complete set up. If you have the ability to do so, you may wish to check the same, before then enabling IPv6 once more after set up. This isn’t ideal of course, in particular as you have hundreds of sites, but it may be useful to help determine a more underlying issue.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Let me know if you have any questions with the above.

Sent you a message on the google form

@wallerservices Many thanks for sharing this additional information. I’ll relay back the information you kindly provided within the form to the team. Unfortunately with the IP v6 Range your sites are hosted on pointing to a blocked region I don’t have any other workaround at present, with Google services blocked from this region.

While I’m passing on your Dreamhost response to the team note that it might be worthwhile checking with Dreamhost to see if they can apply a rule for this server so that any communication with sitekit.withgoogle.com is done over the IPv4 protocol only, and not IP v6. This would allow you to proceed with Site Kit set up, without having to disable IP v6.

I’ll also keep you updated with any update from my colleagues communication with Dreamhost. Thanks again for providing the additional insights.

I’m getting the same problem too! This is what I got back from Dreamhost:

We were basing our troubleshooting on Google’s statement that was shared
during chat “You can check at host level is your site able to communicate
with Site Kit via the following cURL command. You may need to ask your
hosting provider for assistance with this: curl -I
https://sitekit.withgoogle.com”

1. When our specialized team checked using cURL, the response received
   from the Shared server that’s hosting the site (called [abberration]) was
   a 403 error. That would usually mean the Site Kit by Google was blocking
   the requests from the Shared server (403 is forbidden, meaning it doesn’t
   have access).
2. To test, our specialized team ran the same cURL command from 3
   different servers and the response received was a 200 OK. That means the
   servers were able to connect to that URL ttps://sitekit.withgoogle.com
   (Google isn’t blocking those servers, the three tested)

Therefore, it seems there is a block from Google on the [aberration]
Shared server. We don’t have much information on why would this be the
case, but since [aberration] is a Shared server it’s possible that
another user abused the Google service and they decided to block the
[aberration] IP or server.

Since we don’t know why they would be blocking any requests from that
particular Shared server, our suggestion for now, would be to check again
with Google directly (and using this information) to find out why that
might be the case.

Many thanks for sharing your input @jackjpdiscos. My colleague is in touch with Dreamhost on this, so hopefully he’ll have an update shortly. The issue seems to be that for impacted sites, the host’s IPv6 address is geolocating to a region that blocks Google services (ie. Some country’s don’t permit access to Google servers). This block isn’t specifically on the Google side, it seems to be a server configuration.

If you want to open an individual support topic, while including your own IPv6 address we can confirm this is the case with you.

Note also that the plugin needs to connect with sitekit.withgoogle.com. When communication between your host and that address, it can be done via IPv6 or IPv4. In cases where there are no issues, as with your 200 responses above, this is likely via IPv4.

@wallerservices We have been seeing some IPs that were previously blocked becoming unblocked over the last few days. Could you please check and confirm if you are still seeing the same message when attempting Site Kit setup or has this been resolved?

As we didn’t receive a response I’ll mark this as resolved. Feel free to?open a new support topic?if you continue to encounter issues, or reopen this topic and we’d be happy to assist.