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enter image description hereI added a custom domain to point to one of my Google App Engine Projects. It has been approximately 18 hours since I made this change.

How long does it take for DNS changes to propagate. After 18 hours when I hit the domain, I still get "Site can't be reached" on Chrome.

ping: cannot resolve: Unknown host, when I do a ping.

UPDATE: I figured out the issue. I bought the domain uisng Google Domains. It seemed like Google App engine settings, where I added, custom domain was going to update A records in Google Domains for my domain. It didn't. Created A records in Google Domains, and now it works fine. My domain, and subdomain are pointing to a project in Google App engine.

user462455
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1 Answers1

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At the bottom of the Add a new custom domain screen from the GAE App's Custom Domains page in the developer console you can see:

DNS changes can require up to 24 hours to take effect

A snapshot of that screen is illustrated at step 5 of the Adding a custom domain for your application procedure.

Side note: maybe it's also worth re-checking the updated settings, it actually happened to me once - I was waiting (in vain) for DNS propagation only to notice that the changes I thought I completed weren't there - I must have missed an ok/confirm button or something...

If the settings are there you could also try checking using some network other than your usual internet provider (which often is involved in the DNS propagation). Mobile/office maybe?

You can also try some online DNS lookup tools or even website verification tools - often propagation to such servers is faster than to end-user internet providers. It doesn't matter if the app is not up, all you want to see if they're able to get the IP address for your domain. If any of them can get an address then it's really just a matter of time.

Dan Cornilescu
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  • Thanks for the answer ! I noticed the 24 hr delay message, when I was adding custom domain, but I thought that was a worse case estimate. I attached a screenshot which shows, I think, that I didn't miss any more confirm buttons. It shows taht my domains have a A and CNAME records – user462455 Nov 24 '16 at 19:47
  • I compared with my app - mine only has the equivalents of the entries with CNAME records. My A/AAAA records are only visible at the DNS provider site (ENOM). But I'm not sure if this is because my domain was purchased through what used to be Goole Apps, almost 2yrs ago. I also had automatic naked domain mapping to the `www` subdomain, also configured in google apps. – Dan Cornilescu Nov 24 '16 at 20:07
  • I purchased domain on Google Domains. That could be why? – user462455 Nov 24 '16 at 20:07
  • Then Google *should* be able to manage the entries on the registrar for you - at least it did everything for my registration... Those A/AAAA entries - did you manually add those yourself or were they added for you automatically? – Dan Cornilescu Nov 24 '16 at 20:11
  • They were added automatically. – user462455 Nov 24 '16 at 20:11
  • Also - are you trying to access the naked domain (i.e. `example.com`) or the mapped subdomains `www.example.com` and/or `api.example.com`? – Dan Cornilescu Nov 24 '16 at 20:13
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/128975/discussion-between-user462455-and-dan-cornilescu). – user462455 Nov 24 '16 at 20:14
  • My www subdomain (e.g., www.example.com) worked within like five minutes. However, an hour later I'm still waiting for the naked domain (e.g., example.com) to work. Wondering if I did something wrong or if the updating is just taking longer for the main domain than for the www subdomain. Oh, OK, I see that App Engine does not support naked domains, so you have to do a redirect to the WWW address? Odd, but OK. http://blog.notdot.net/2009/12/Naked-domains-on-App-Engine – Carl Feb 03 '18 at 10:46
  • @Carl: that post is very old, things changed since. Naked domains are also supported, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36283743/get-custom-domain-name-to-work-with-app-engine-instance/36317462#36317462 – Dan Cornilescu Feb 03 '18 at 15:05