Www.mydomain.tld same as mydomain.tld - unexpected results
-
Hi
I set up a campaign to monitor a website and chose to track the root domain, however the report showed every single page on my website was duplicated with itself when seen as www.mydomain.tld as opposed to just mydomain.tld.
I deleted the campaign and set it up to monitor only the www.mydomain.tld as I don't use any other subdomains, however in Bing results the website is listed without the www and so is not recognised in the ranking checker.
How can I set it up so that seomoz recognises the pages as the same either with or without the www?
-
Excellent response THB. We do both for all sites.
-
Hi Pandy
Set your htaccess file to redirect all non www variants to the www ones (or vice versa depending on which you'd prefer). That should prevent the seoMoz 'bot' from reaching the 'wrong' ones(and also make sure search engines don't too.
On a side note - if Bing has your pages cached without the www and you want to go with the www variants then I suggest you first do a 301 redirect of all the pages and the domain itself so you don't lose out on any traffic and links built etc
Edit : going to leave my reply even though it seems THB beat me too it(only just though!)
-
To handle this you need to setup a permanent redirect from mydomain.tld to www.mydomain.tld (or vice versa).
If your site is running Apache you can use a .htaccess file do handle this.
Simply create a file called .htaccess (make sure when you save the file you are not saving it as .txt as that with append the .txt to the file like so: .htaccess.txt which you do not want; save as 'All Files' or whatever), and save it to your public_html directory, or whatever your web root is.
Add the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mydomain.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.tld/$1 [L,R=301]
That should now effectively keep your site from being broken into 2.
Google also recommends you create two(2) Profiles within Google Webmaster Tools, one for the www. and one for the non www. where you can then specify under "Site Configuration > Settings > Preferred Domain" which method you have chosen as per your .htaccess file.
Hope that answers your question.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is there a tool that can rank multiple results for a single keyword?
Hi all, I have searched the web for a tool that can tell me if more than 1 landing page is ranking for a single keyword. I have noticed sometimes that a single keyword query can trigger up to 3 landing pages within the 1st SERP. I found an old bookmarklet from Lunametrics that might do the trick using Search Console data, but the link is no longer working. Any other pointers, or can Moz do this as well? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | rodelmo40 -
Abnormal crawl issues appearing in my Moz results
I have been asked to look at a site for a friend and was more than surprised to see 16,9k crawl issues appear in the dashboard... of this 6,238 are duplicate page content and 5878 are duplicated page titles. What on earth is going on? I have spoken to the web developer as it appears there is a dev site somewhere and this is his response [Can I stress that Google determines which site was in the index first and then removes other sites it sees as having duplicate content. Our dev sites appearing in the search index would not affect your ranking due to duplicate content as Google would see your site as the first site with the content] As I cannot make contact with him, I am scratching my head, surely a dev site should be no-indexed, it sounds as though he is saying that its ok because Google will take the main site as the first site with the content... Very confused! Help need MOZ community. Manythanks, Sarah
Moz Pro | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Why doesn't OSE show results from sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, etc.?
I know OSE used to provide link data from these domains. But I have been doing link profile lookups on sites that I know have links from these domains - and they don't show up in my results. Just to make sure, they don't even show up when I sort the sites by domain authority.
Moz Pro | | ProspectMX0 -
Google shutting down Rank Tracking Software? - Raven and AHREFS close down ranking results.
Hi, I was wondering if other people had noticed the (very sudden) closing down of the ranking tools for both Raven and Ahrefs - both of which were major parts of their software. Given the sudden and synced timing my guess is that Google is throwing its weight around and banking on the doors of companies offering ranking software with the threat of a fat lawsuite! What is everyone else using for their rank checking ? Will this impact SEOMOZ ranking results ?
Moz Pro | | James770 -
Why do my Rankings Report show different results than the Rank Tracker tool?
I noticed that my ranking report puts be at 33 in google for one term, but when I use the Rank Tracker under Research tools it places me at 15.
Moz Pro | | trainsimple0 -
Help Understanding Crawl results on this site
I'm just starting to SEO this site http://thefirmbusinessbrokerage.com/welcome and I'm having trouble with the crawl report data. First question, should I be building links to the site above or the main page http://thefirmbusinessbrokerage.com/ (which is a flash intro). If I build links to the flash page, what do I do to the forwarding URL to the welcome page to make it effective? Second question, why does the crawl data report show up almost completely blank? Is this site perfect or are there some onsite issues that I'm not seeing. Thanks for your support and guidance on this site. I'm not hosting the site, just building links and offering optimization advice onsite. JOE
Moz Pro | | KreativElement0 -
Localized Search Results
I provide SEO for local service providers therefore I am mostly interesting in ranking highly in the "localized results" SERPs. Is anyone familiar with any good tools, infographics, blogs, or webinars that could be of benefit? How big of a radius do the localized results usually encompass? Are the keyword ranking reports from SEOmoz even relevant for reporting purposes? Should I include the city name (i.e. "Seattle Doctor", "Doctor in Seattle", "Doctor Seattle", etc.) in my keyword research or is this becoming less relevant? Any insight is welcome and appreciated! Thanks in advance!!
Moz Pro | | GoChiroPractice0 -
Keyword Difficulty Tool on local results. Is this really working?
I've tried the Keyword Difficulty Tool on "consultant seo" in Romania (that is .ro) The tool says that it's Highly Competitive (59%), but I've got my website on #8 in 2 weeks. Question: Is this tool really working for local results? It seems way off... Actually I was kind of expecting for this keyword to be easy, what is confusing is the "59%" from the Keyword Difficulty results. Thanks for the answers!
Moz Pro | | wizant0