google_sk_service_connection_fail error

Hi @atmaarten,

Thanks for reaching out. This message can occur if there is something blocking access to the Site Kit service. This could be at host or browser level. So we can determine more on this, please share the following:

1. Your Site Health information. You can use this form to share privately if preferred.?
2. When checking the Site Kit dashboard from a Chrome browser incognito window does the same occur? This can help indicate a browser related block.

How can i fix this? I can’t reset the settings as Site Kit hasn’t been connected with this website.

There is an option to reset the plugin, even if it hasn’t yet been successfully connected (Tools > Available Tools > Reset Site Kit). This however is unlikely to resolve any issues blocking access to the Site Kit service. Once we have the information above we can perform some troubleshooting steps.

Let me know if you have any questions with the above.

I want to confirm that I have started having this issue as of right now also… this is a new bug or something is down on Google’s side I’m guessing?

Looks like your site is having a technical issue with requesting data from Google services.
To get more help, ask a question on our?support forum?and include the text of the original error message:
google_api_connection_fail


In addition, if you decide to bypass the error message, you get the following:

The request to the authentication proxy has failed with an error: cURL error 28: Failed to connect to sitekit.withgoogle.com port 443 after 5209 ms: Connection timed out?Get help.

Hi @alrnetwork. If you’d like to open an individual support topic and share your Site Health information within the topic, or privately referencing your own support topic using this link I’d be happy to investgate this further.

As there is no known issue with the service I can propose some checks after reviewing your setup, in particular if you were able to set up Site Kit on the same site previously. We did have some reports of users not being able to connect if their site is communicating with Site Kit (sitekit.withgoogle.com) via IPv6 protocol, with no issues over IPv4. This isn’t an issue with Google servers specifically, but we can review your case further.

I’ll keep an eye out for your topic. Thank you!

Hi @atmaarten,

We’ve received a Site Health information report referencing this support topic. Assuming this is coming from you we can perform some additional checks on this, to confirm whether this block is at host level, in particular as you mention UpCloud as your hosting provider (similar to the error as described here).

Firstly, can you check whether the same occurs if checking your site once more? We’ve been in touch with your hosting provider and they stated they’re not aware of any blocks at present.

If you do encounter the same on this site, the following cURL commands can be used to determine blocks:
curl -6 -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com
This will check can you site communicate over the Site Kit service’s IPv6 address.

curl -4 -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com
This will check can you site communicate over the Site Kit service’s IPv4 address.

Let me know if you have any questions with the above.

Hi @atmaarten,

Many thanks for sharing the results from the checks above. I’ll check your case with the team considering it’s only an IPv6 block, with connections via IPv4 showing a successful 200 response.

As I can’t determine your servers IPv6 address can you share this so I can forward this to the team for a check?

Note also that you may wish to temporarily disable IPv6 at host level in order to complete Site Kit set up. You will then be able to complete set up successfully. It’s possible that when you enable IPv6 once more you may see dashboard errors, but if you can perform this check it may also be useful.

I’ll keep an eye out for your IPv6 address. Note also that we are already in discussions with your hosting provider about these IPv6 blocks. Thank you.

Many thanks for sharing your IPv6 address. From reviewing the UpCloud reports with the team they stated that there were no recent reports. I’ve added your IPv6 address range to be checked for any possible blocks on our side.

While I don’t have a known workaround other than temporarily disabling IPv6 during Site Kit set up, you may wish to discuss this with UpCloud also. It may be possible that they can ensure any visits from your impacted site to the Site Kit service (sitekit.withgoogle.com) are done over IPv4 protocol, and not IPv6. This will allow set up to proceed.

I’ll keep this support topic open while keeping you updated here with any progress on this.

Hi James!

I got in contact with UpCloud about this issue, and they whitelisted my IPv6 adresses. After doing a lookup with cURL, it gave me a 200 response code; but that didn’t fix the issue. Disabeling the IPv6 completely did fix the issue though.

I’m hesitant to disable the IPv6 on all our servers. Is there any drawback to disabeling IPv6? I thought IPv4 was the default fallback when IPv6 didn’t work, but i just want to check with you if you know if there’s any possibility of another issue popping up with rolling this out to all our servers. This might not fall into the scope of support for the plugin, so if you can’t answer this question thats fine.

Thanks for all the hard work, and the awesome support!

Hi @atmaarten,

You’re correct to be cautious about disabling IPv6. While I’m not an expert on network protocols it would mean you’ll have no IPv6 traffic and it’s possible some services require it, while having IPv6 is also the successor to IPv4, meaning it’s more futureproof.

Note also that if you did receive a 200 response from the latest IPv6 cURL command check when communicating with sitekit.withgoogle.com, it might be worth attempting Site Kit once more, this time from a Chrome browser incognito window. If the error is the exact same, google_sk_service_connection_fail let me know and I’ll check this further with the team.

Many thanks for your patience on this @atmaarten.

From checking for blocks based on the IPv6 provided it looks like there are no blocks we could determine at present on the Google side. Can you attempt set up once more and let me know how you get on with this?

Hi @jamesosborne!

The issue seems to be fixed, and everything is working as expected! Thanks a lot for the support ??

Glad to hear it @atmaarten, and appreciate the follow up. Note that I don’t believe there were any changes on the Google side, however, from discussions with UpCloud these issues have become less prevalent. It’s possible that there were some changes at host level to ensure you can connect.

If you run into any further errors or notices, you know where to find us! Best of luck.