Site kit stopped working across multiple sites all at once

Hi @craigmorrison5,

Thanks for reaching out, and sharing details of the troubleshooting you’ve performed. So we can determine more on this please share your Site Health information using this form, while also sharing whether you’re using private shared hosting or a VPS plan. I ask as it’s possible there may be a hosting or IP configuration issue, in particular if your connection to the Site Kit service (sitekit.withgoogle.com) is via IP v6.

If possible you may also wish to attempt set up from another WordPress site on the same hosting platform, or can you proceed with setup from a disposable WordPress site.

Submitted.

I don’t want to connect the test site as I don’t want it interfering with my search console data?

Many thanks for sharing your Site Health information for one of the impacted sites. As nothing obvious stands out, can you share what JSON errors appeared when your sites became disconnected, and also what plan you’re on with Dreamhost? I didn’t see any details on this within the information you shared. I ask as if all your impacted sites are on the same hosting plan (or VPS) it’s possible there may be a configuration error. We did have some recent reports of similar errors, but only if your site is communicating with the Site Kit service using IPv6.

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

I don’t want to connect the test site as I don’t want it interfering with my search console data?

This isn’t a problem, as Site Kit will register a new Search console property for this temporary WordPress install. It doesn’t impact any traffic or metrics for other sites. If you can perform a check, let me know if you are able to connect. If so, we’ll perform some checks at host level.

The setup went fine on the temporary site. All working fine.

I have gotten no where with Dreamhost support.

All of these sites are on the same hosting plan, however, I also have a single site on their paid Dreampress platform which is not effected by this.

The original JSON error is now gone after I disconnected and tried to reconnect, but it was : Data error in analytics / Invalid JSON response

Thanks for the update @craigmorrison5. If you’re not encountering the same from the disposable WordPress site, and the same is occurring while using troubleshooting mode as you’ve previously indicated, then the block is likely a host level block.

On the 3 sites that are impacted, are these on a shared hosting account with Dreamhost?

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

You can also use the following cURL commands to check can you communicate specifically with IP v6, which I suspect may be the problem.
curl -6 -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com

The second command returns:

curl: (7) Couldn’t connect to server

I just added an IP v6 address to the domain. Waiting to test that.

This hasn’t fixed anything so far. Any more suggestions?

Hi @craigmorrison5,

Rather than adding an IPv6 address to your domain, have you tried temporarily disabling IPv6 at host level, before attempting Site Kit set up once more? If you’re on a shared hosting plan this may not be possible, but you can check this with Dreamhost.

I have no idea how to fix this as the support I’m getting here and the support I’m getting from Dreamhost are sending me in a back and forth loop. This is the last message I got from Dreamhost:

I'm afraid you may need inquire with Google support and/or use the
support forum as to why the 'google_api_connection_fail' error occurs.
Possibly there is a server-side setting their support can suggest. I
reviewed the apache error.log and also the debug.log (wp_debug was
enabled) and there does not appear to be any entries reporting issues
preventing the api connection. I see several deprecated warning entries
in the debug.log but I do not think this is related:

[16-Jan-2023 21:29:28 UTC] PHP Deprecated: Hook
elementor/widgets/widgets_registered is <strong>deprecated</strong> since
version 3.5.0! Use elementor/widgets/register instead. in
/home/dh_btc5n5/makethatyourself.com/wp-includes/functions.php on line
5758

For additional troubleshooting, I also enabled php error logging
referencing the steps here -
https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/214894197

I also reloaded the WordPress core files to help further isolate what
could be causing the issue:

@daken:~/makethatyourself.com$ wp core download --version=6.1.1 --force
Downloading WordPress 6.1.1 (en_US)...
md5 hash verified: 38a0a4f7b7ec8429b2fe96de6b5d6572
Success: WordPress downloaded.

I found this thread from a user reporting a similar error -
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/site-kit-stopped-working-google_api_connection_fail/page/2/

It's possible Google Site Kit may be blocking your site/server? I used
curl (in reference to the above thread) to reach
'https://sitekit.withgoogle.com' and it returns a 403:

@daken:~/makethatyourself.com$ curl -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com
HTTP/2 403
alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-29=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q050=":443";
ma=2592000,h3-Q046=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=":443";
ma=2592000,quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="46,43"

You can inquire with Google Site Kit if they're able to confirm if your
IP is restricted access to connect to the API:

makethatyourself.com
Shared IP: 67.205.15.101
IPv6: 2607:F298:0005:6000:0000:0000:0C62:CB5E

Hi @craigmorrison5,

Thanks for sharing the updates above, appreciate the follow up. We did check for external blocks on the Site Kit service and there were none. I also just checked one of our own Dreamhost test accounts (shared hosting) and I don’t encounter the same.

While the standard cURL check above which you shared (curl -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com) indicated a 403 error, it unfortunately doesn’t state whether this connected via the Site Kit IPv4 or IPv6 address. Can you ask Dreamhost to perform the checks below:

curl -6 -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com

curl -4 -I https://sitekit.withgoogle.com

What I suspect may happen, it you’ll be able to connect with the second command below, ensuring that when the connection to Site Kit resolves to an IPv4 address you’ll be able to connect. If there is a 403 error with the first command, then this indicates a IP v6 block only. Another user reported the same, and in their case they disabled IP v6 in order to connect Site Kit.

Let me know how you get on with the above checks.

Hi @craigmorrison5,

I’m just following up with you to check whether you’ve had time to check the above? We are investigate other reports of this, so any additional insights may be of use. We will keep you updated regardless once we have more insights into this.

I gave up and installed manually, but I can tell you the last thing I got from support.

Thank you for contacting DreamHost Support, I’d be happy to help.

I just perform the test , I would like to share with you the outputs:

dh_btc5n5@daken:~/makethatyourself.com$ curl -4 -I
https://sitekit.withgoogle.com
HTTP/2 200
content-type: text/html
vary: Accept-Encoding
x-cloud-trace-context: c9dfd68c2ff5414a71dbf6b2de1352c5
date: Wed, 18 Jan 2023 13:54:43 GMT
server: Google Frontend
alt-svc: h3=”:443″; ma=2592000,h3-29=”:443″; ma=2592000,h3-Q050=”:443″;
ma=2592000,h3-Q046=”:443″; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=”:443″;
ma=2592000,quic=”:443″; ma=2592000; v=”46,43″

dh_btc5n5@daken:~/makethatyourself.com$ curl -6 -I
https://sitekit.withgoogle.com
HTTP/2 403
alt-svc: h3=”:443″; ma=2592000,h3-29=”:443″; ma=2592000,h3-Q050=”:443″;
ma=2592000,h3-Q046=”:443″; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=”:443″;
ma=2592000,quic=”:443″; ma=2592000; v=”46,43″

Many thanks @craigmorrison5, and I can completely understand why you gave up! We’ll keep you updated here as we try to determine more on this, Thank you!

We are having the same exact issue with dreamhost. Multiple sites on a shared server. We have a ticket opened in this support group also and Dreamhost says the same thing.