Verify that a channel is yours

Verification proves that you are the owner or an administrator of a MAX channel. After it a blue badge appears on the channel page, and your organization gets its channel’s statistics without a subscription, the right to choose categories and region, and the “My channels” section. Verification is free and takes a couple of minutes through the datool bot in MAX.

Where to find it: the “I own this channel” button on the channel page at max.datool.ru, the “Yes, verify that the channel is mine” button after adding a channel, or the “Add your channel” block in “My channels”. The verification page is https://max.datool.ru/channels/<channel>/verify/.

Sign-in required

You can verify a channel only after signing in: the channel is assigned to the organization you are currently working in (everyone has at least a personal organization). Without signing in, the verification page sends you to sign in and back. See Sign up and sign in.

What verification gives you

A blue badge next to the channel title — on the channel page, on post pages and in the “Verified by owners” collection. The badge tooltip says “Ownership of this channel is verified by datool.ru”. The green A+ shield (Roskomnadzor register label) does not depend on verification.
A higher quality index. In the “Trust” group of the quality index verification gives 30 of the group’s 100 points; the group weighs 20 of the 100 total points, so verification adds up to 6 points to the index.
The “My channels” section (max.datool.ru/my/channels/) — all verified channels of the organization with totals for a period. See My channels.
Your own channel’s statistics — without a subscription. On the page of their channel the owner sees everything about the channel itself: subscriptions and unsubscriptions by day, subscriber retention and tenure, the share of active subscribers, quality index history, reach by post format and other blocks that are closed to others by the “channel owner and subscription” rule. Market blocks — comparison with similar channels, ads, mentions and others — open with a subscription, as for everyone. What is open to whom — see What is free.
Your own categories and territory. The owner chooses up to five categories (one main) and the channel’s territory — in “My channels” or in the window of the “You own this channel” button on the channel page. Automatic classification does not override this choice.
More frequent updates. A verified channel is checked every 2 minutes regardless of its size: subscribers and new posts appear faster.
A private channel starts being collected. Without the bot as an administrator we cannot see a private channel; after verification through the bot its statistics are collected, and only your organization sees them.
A digest in the bot. Owners without a subscription receive a short weekly digest of all their channels for the past week from the datool bot (on Mondays at 10:00 Moscow time).

How to verify a channel through the bot

The main method is the datool bot in MAX. It works for both public and private channels.

Verification starts with the “I own this channel” button in the channel page header (number 1 in the first picture) and its window (second picture). Then follow the steps.

Channel page header: the “I own this channel” button marked with number 1

The “Verify your channel” window for a visitor who is not signed in

Open the channel page on max.datool.ru and click the “I own this channel” button with the lock icon. The “Verify your channel” window opens: without signing in it has a “Sign in or sign up” button, after signing in — “Confirm through the bot”.
Get a one-time code. The “Confirm channel ownership” page shows a code like DT-7K3M-Q2. The code is valid for 30 minutes and is tied to this channel and your organization; it does not change when you refresh the page. The “Copy code” button copies it to the clipboard.
Open the bot. Click “Open the bot in MAX” — the datool bot opens and the code is sent to it automatically. If the link does not open, find the bot in MAX by the name shown in step 1 on the page and send it the code as a message.
Check the organization. The bot replies which channel will be assigned to which organization. Check the name: if you did not send the code (for example, someone else forwarded the link), press “It wasn't me” in the bot — the request will be closed.
Add the bot as a channel administrator in the channel settings in MAX. Read-only rights are enough: the bot will not publish, delete messages or manage members — we never ask for publishing rights.
Press “Check” in the bot. The bot makes sure that it is a channel administrator and that you are the owner or an administrator of this channel. The verification page updates by itself (it checks the status every 3 seconds) and shows “Ownership confirmed”. The organization’s email receives a “Channel verified” letter.

The bot was only promoted to administrator?

MAX tells the bot only that it was added to a channel. If the bot was already a member and was just promoted to administrator, the bot does not learn about it. In that case remove the bot from the channel and add it again — straight away as an administrator.

If you cannot add the bot — code in the description

A public channel has a fallback method without the bot:

On the verification page expand the “Cannot add the bot?” block.
Paste the one-time code in full into the channel description in MAX and save the description.
Click “Check description”.

When the channel is verified, you will see “Ownership confirmed. You can remove the code from the description.” — after that you can delete the code from the description.

Message	What to do
The code is not in the channel description…	make sure the whole code is pasted and the description is saved; MAX sometimes shows the new description after a minute — check again
We check at most once every 10 seconds	wait a little and click again
This channel is private: its description is visible only to members…	a private channel cannot be verified this way — use the bot
MAX did not respond	try again in a minute
The code is no longer valid — get a new one	the code has expired, get a new one

Private channels

A private channel is not in the catalog, and we may not have its page. You can verify it in two ways:

Add the datool bot as a channel administrator. The bot itself sends the person who added it a “Confirm channel” button with a link to the verification page, then follow steps 2–6 above.
Paste the invite link https://max.ru/join/… into the “Add your channel” block in “My channels”. The site finds the channel and checks whether the bot is its administrator: if yes, the verification page opens; if not, you get a hint that the channel is found but the bot is not an administrator yet, with the bot’s name and a “Check again” button. Here simply promoting the bot to administrator is enough.

The title and statistics of a private channel are visible only to the organization that verified it (or brought the invite link). The Add a channel form does not accept invite links.

Verification page states

Page heading	What it means	What you can do
Confirm channel ownership	the code is issued, we are waiting for it in the bot; at the bottom — “Waiting for the code in the bot. The code is valid for 30 minutes.”	“Open the bot in MAX”, “Copy code”, “To the channel page”, the description fallback
Make the bot an administrator	the bot received the code and waits to be made an administrator and for “Check” to be pressed	add the bot and press “Check” in the bot
The code has expired	30 minutes passed or “It wasn't me” was pressed in the bot	“Show a new code” — the previous code stops working
Ownership confirmed	the channel is assigned to your organization	“To my channels”, “Open the channel page”, “Remove confirmation”
Another organization has already confirmed this channel	the channel belongs to another organization	if this is a mistake — “Report an inaccuracy” on the channel page with a link to the channel; support will sort it out
This channel cannot be confirmed	it is a group chat or the channel was deleted in MAX	only an existing channel can be verified

An organization can request new codes no more than 10 times per hour — otherwise the page says “New codes can be requested no more than 10 times per hour. Please try again later.”

The blue badge

The blue badge is visible to all visitors. Click it to see the tooltip “Ownership of this channel is verified by datool.ru”. On a verified channel only members of the owner organization see the owner button — as “You own this channel”, with category and territory editing; others do not see the button.

Rules

One channel — one organization. The channel belongs to an organization, not to a person: all its members see the owner statistics of the channel. Disabling a member in the organization does not affect verification.
Another organization verified the channel — the channel moves to it, and the previous owner organization receives an email. If the verification is wrong, write via “Report an inaccuracy” on the channel page — support resolves the dispute.
The bot was removed from administrators — collection of a private channel stops, but verification stays: ownership has already been proven. Bring the bot back and collection resumes.
“Remove confirmation” on the verification page is available to the owner and administrators of the organization. The blue badge disappears and the stored subscriber list of the channel is deleted. The bot does not leave the channel administrators in MAX by itself — remove it if you need to.
Subscriber data. Subscriptions, unsubscriptions, retention and tenure are calculated from the subscriber list that MAX gives only to a bot administrator. We store only the subscriber’s MAX number and times — no names. The list is processed only for channels with up to 100 thousand subscribers; unsubscriptions are known from the verification date.