Www v.s non www
-
The canonical URLs (and all our link building efforts) is on the www version of the site.
However, the site is having a massive technical problem and need to redirect some links (some of which are very important) from the www to the non www version of the site (for these pages the canonical link is still the www version).
How big of a SEO problem is this?
Can you please explain the exact SEO dangers?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for all your responses - I will use this as the basis of my answer to the technical team.
-
I'm endorsing Stephen's idea, because if you really have no choice, I think it's a good potential alternative. THB's comments (which I thumbed up) are very important, though.
If you really have no choice, I do think the 302 is safer here - the canonical tag should override it. There is some risk, though, and it's definitely not ideal.
I'm not clear on the problem, but could you return a 503? It basically says "We've got a temporary problem - come back later" and, if it really is temporary, Google won't de-index the pages. If you're talking a couple of days, this may be a better solution. If you're talking a few weeks, you may have to take Stephen's advice. You might want to pull in expert help, though, because my gut reaction is that there's a better way to fix what's broken here.
-
Hehe.
Generally speaking, and I've actually come across this quite a bit lately, it's better to just put your efforts towards fixing the technical issues than to try and manipulate the site using redirects and canonical tags. But it's easy to say when it's not my technical problem, nor my money/time on the line to fix it! However, that is always the best-case scenario in my opinion.
-
Agreed. It's a problem waiting to bite you in the proverbials....
-
I worry about setting up a canonical tag that points to a URL Google can't access (as it's just being redirected via 302 back to the non-www version anytime it will try and read the canonical URL). And since a canonical tag is kinda sorta like a 301, you'd ultimately be 301'ing (kinda sorta) back to the www version, only to have a 302 header sent, 302'ing Google back to the non-www. And endless loop, so-to-speak. I'm not sure how Google would handle this.
How about just working 24/7 to resolve the "technical problem" that is causing this? I know, easy for me to say
-
I'm no expert on this but I think you'll be fine IF you:
1 - 302 redirect (temporary redirect) to the non-www page
2 - Add a rel canonical on the non-www page giving the WWW version link credit.
When you've fixed your tech issues remove the 302 redirect.
I THINK google will play nice on this.
Hope that helps
Steve
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
-
Non-standard HTML tags in content
I had coded my website's article content with a non-standard tag <cnt>that surrounded other standard tags that contained the article content, I.e.</cnt> , . The whole text was enclosed in a div that used Schema.org markup to identify the contents of the div as the articleBody. When looking at scraped data for stories in Webmaster Tools, the content of the story was there and identified as the articleBody correctly. It's recently been suggested by someone else that the presence of the non-standard <cnt>tags were actually making the content of the article uncrawlable by the Googlebot, this effectively rendering the content invisible. I did not believe this to be true, since the content appeared to be correctly indexed in Webmaster Tools, but for the sake of a test I agreed to removing them. In the last 6 weeks since they were removed, there have been no changes in impressions or traffic from organic search, which leads me to believe that the removal of the <cnt>tags actually had no effect, since the content was already being indexed successfully and nothing else has changed.</cnt></cnt> My question is whether or not an encapsulating non-standard tag as I've described would actually make the content invisible to Googlebot, or if it should not have made any difference so long as the correct Schema.org markup was in place? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | dlindsey0 -
Why are only PDFs on my client's site being indexed, and not actual pages?
My client has recently built a new site (we did not build this), which is a subdomain of their main site. The new site is: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/uk/en/. (Their main domain is: http://itelligencegroup.com/uk/) This new Addstore site has recently gone live (in the past week or so) and so far, Google appears to have indexed 56 pdf files that are on the site, but it hasn't indexed any of the actual web pages yet. I can't figure out why though. I've checked the robots.txt file for the site which appears to be fine: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/robots.txt. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti0 -
What's with the redirects?
Hi there,
Technical SEO | | HeadStud
I have a strange issue where pages are redirecting to the homepage.Let me explain - my website is http://thedj.com.au Now when I type in www.thedj.com.au/payments it redirects to https://thedj.com.au (even though it should be going to the page https://thedj.com.au/payments). Any idea why this is and how to fix? My htaccess file is below: BEGIN HTTPS Redirection Plugin <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^home.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^photos.htm$ http://photos.thedj.com.au/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^contacts.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/contact-us/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^booking.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/book-dj/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^downloads.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/downloads/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^payonline.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/payments/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^price.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/pricing/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^questions.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/faq/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^links.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/links/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^thankyous/index.htm$ https://thedj.com.au/testimonials/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://thedj.com.au/ [L,R=301]</ifmodule> END HTTPS Redirection Plugin BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mrdj.net.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mrdj.net.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mrdj.com.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mrdj.com.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thedjs.com.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.thedjs.com.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^theperthweddingdjs.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.theperthweddingdjs.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au/" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thedjs.net.au$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.thedjs.net.au$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https://thedj.com.au" [R=301,L]0 -
WWW to Non-WWW = Less Indexing?
Hi all, About 10 months ago we changed all of our urls to redirect to a non-www vs. the www because it was creating both iterations and therefore duplicate content. We didn't change anything in Webmaster Tools and it looks like our indexing went down significantly. Is this a problem? How can I fix it? *It looks like GWT also went through an update at that time? klxJ7gl
Technical SEO | | Becky_Converge0 -
To 301 redirect or not to 301 redirect? duplicate content problem www.domain.com and www.domain.com/en/
Hello, If your website is getting flagged for duplicate content from your main domain www.domain.com and your multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ is it wise to 301 redirect the english multilingual website to the main site? Please advise. We've recently installed the joomish component to one of our joomla websites in an effort to streamline a spanish translation of the website. The translation was a success and the new spanish webpages were indexed but unfortunately one of the web developers enabled the english part of the component and some english webpages were also indexed under the multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ and that flagged us for duplicate content. I added a 301 redirect to redirect all visitors from the www.domain/en/ webpages to the main www.domain.com/ webpages. But is that the proper way of handling this problem? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | Chris-CA0 -
Pagination V Canonical
Hi Guys, I am needing some help with regards to duplicate page content issues. Using Zen Cart on an ecommerce platform and it is bringing up duplicate page content on pages. For instance:- http://www.blissfulkidsparties.com.au/store/1st-birthday-themes-barnyard-bash-1st-birthday-c-67_321/ is the same as:- http://www.blissfulkidsparties.com.au/store/1st-birthday-themes-barnyard-bash-1st-birthday-c-67_321/?sort=20a&page=1 Rel=Prev/Next as I understand it will treat http://www.blissfulkidsparties.com.au/store/1st-birthday-themes-barnyard-bash-1st-birthday-c-67_321/?sort=20a&page=1 http://www.blissfulkidsparties.com.au/store/1st-birthday-themes-barnyard-bash-1st-birthday-c-67_321/?sort=20a&page=2 http://www.blissfulkidsparties.com.au/store/1st-birthday-themes-barnyard-bash-1st-birthday-c-67_321/?sort=20a&page=3 as one page but won't solve the issue of the duplicate content issues between:- http://www.blissfulkidsparties.com.au/store/1st-birthday-themes-barnyard-bash-1st-birthday-c-67_321/ and http://www.blissfulkidsparties.com.au/store/1st-birthday-themes-barnyard-bash-1st-birthday-c-67_321/?sort=20a&page=1 am I better using rel=Canonical here instead??? Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | jazzah0 -
Rel cannonical on all my URL's
Hi, sorry if this question has already been asked, but I can't seem to find the correct answer. In my crawling report for the domain: http://www.wellbo.de I get rel cannonical notices. I have redirected all pages of http://wellbo.de to http://www.wellbo.de with a 301 redirect. Where is my error? Why do I get these notices? I hope the image helps. Ep7Rw.jpg
Technical SEO | | wellbo0 -
Seeing non-www in yahoo results - good or bad?
My site ranks for both domain versions but more non-www than www - Should I make it one or the other? How do I tell Yahoo to just choose one? Ehh?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610