Help! www and non-www urls are driving me mad!
-
Sorry folks, I'm a very recently joined member, and after a five year gap in creating websites, I've decided to get back into the saddle and start again.
Boy how things have changed!
I'm soaking up all sorts of information from everywhere I can to get up to date with these changes, but I've come across this www v non-www problem in a big way.
I realise there are already posts in here about this, but each time I read them, my mind seems to slip into some sort of loop that does not get anywhere.
Basically, I think Google has indexed most of my pages as non-www, and only a hadful as www's.
I have opened two accounts in Google Webmaster Tools for both www and non-www, and declared my preference for both accordingly. That was two days ago.
As unprofessional as it may sound, I use Serif Web Plus X6, simply beacause it did the job six years ago, and it's all I know until I find and teach myself something better.
My question is this - I can only create one page on X6, and yet there are two versions indexed in Google (although not all of them). I can only amend the one page that exists in X6, so how do I canonicalize two pages when there's the only version I have access to amending? Or am I miissing the point???
I hope that made sense?!
I wouldn't mind, but I specified that I didn't want the site to be indexed yet with 'no follow', as it's nowhere near finished, but for some reason (probably due to placing Adsense ads on there) Google went ahead and indexed it anyway!
The site is either http://www.cushioncutengagementringsstore.com or http://cushioncutengagementringsstore.com, depending on how you look at it!
Any light you can shed on this would be gratefuly received!
Thanks.
Cem.
-
Thanks a bunch Matt! Your kind response seems to have solved it. I have re-submitted a request to Google today to re-index the site, so I'm hoping the problem will have resolved itself in the next few days. Thank you again! Cem
-
You need to put a 301 redirect from none www. version to your www. version.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633
If for instance you have an apache server you can create a 301 redirect by placing the following in the .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^cushioncutengagementringsstore.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.cushioncutengagementringsstore.com/$1 [R=301,L]Just checking when you say you specified it with 'no follow' you need to make sure you have noindex, nofollow meta tags on your pages if you don't want Google to index them:
http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html
alternatively you can use a robots.txt file to block you whole site to stop it being indexed:
http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
Hope this helps..
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
-
Website URL, Robots.txt and Google Search Console (www. vs non www.)
Hi MOZ Community,
Technical SEO | | Badiuzz
I would like to request your kind assistance on domain URLs - www. VS non www. Recently, my team have moved to a new website where a 301 Redirection has been done. Original URL : https://www.example.com.my/ (with www.) New URL : https://example.com.my/ (without www.) Our current robots.txt sitemap : https://www.example.com.my/sitemap.xml (with www.)
Our Google Search Console property : https://www.example.com.my/ (with www.) Question:
1. How/Should I standardize these so that Google crawler can effectively crawl my website?
2. Do I have to change back my website URLs to (with www.) or I just need to update my robots.txt?
3. How can I update my Google Search Console property to reflect accordingly (without www.), because I cannot see the options in the dashboard.
4. Is there any to dos such as Canonicalization needed, or should I wait for Google to automatically detect and change it, especially in GSC property? Really appreciate your kind assistance. Thank you,
Badiuzz0 -
Redirect non slash to slash
Hello SEO gurus We have an issue here ( www.xyz.com.au) is having 200 responses www.xyz.com.au and www.xyz.com.au/ ( when i ran the crawl test i found this ) We have been advised to do a 301 from non slash to slash ( as our other pages are showing up with slash ) for the consistency we decided to go with this but our devs just couldnt do it. Error is - redirect loop and this site is a wordpress one Can anyone help us with this issue? Help is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Pack0 -
URL Structure for Product Pages
Hi Moz Community. I'm in need of some URL structure advice for product pages. We currently have ~4,000+ products and I'm trying to determine whether I need a new URL structure from the previous site owners. There are two current product URL structures that exist in our website: 1.http://www.example.com/bracelets/gold-bracelets/1-1-10-ct-diamond-tw-slip-on-bangle-14k-pink-gold-gh-i1-i2/ (old URL structure)
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
2. http://www.example.com/gemstone-bracelet-prd-bcy-121189/ (new URL structure) The problem is that half of our products are still in the old structure (no one moved them forward), but at the same time I'm not sure if the new structure is optimized as much as possible. Every single gemstone bracelet, or whatever product will have the same url structure, only being unique with the product number at the end. Would it be better to change everything over to more product specific URLS. I.e. example.com/topaz-gemstone-dangle-bracelet. Thanks for your help!
-Reed0 -
WWW and Without WWW Backlinks
I have just seen through ahrefs and found without WWW have more backlinks instead of WWW. Is there any way to forward all those without WWW to WWW domain, is there any harm or effect in serp ranking?
Technical SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Content and url duplication?
One of the campaign tools flags one of my clients sites as having lots of duplicates. This is true in the sense the content is sort of boiler plate but with the different countries wording changed. The is same with the urls but they are different in the sense a couple of words have changed in the url`s. So its not the case of a cms or server issue as this seomoz advises. It doesnt need 301`s! Thing is in the niche, freight, transport operators, shipping, I can see many other sites doing the same thing and those sites have lots of similar pages ranking very well. In fact one site has over 300 keywords ranked on page 1-2, but it is a large site with an 12yo domain, which clearly helps. Of course having every page content unique is important, however, i suppose it is better than copy n paste from other sites. So its unique in that sense. Im hoping to convince the site owner to change the content over time for every country. A long process. My biggest problem for understanding duplication issues is that every tabloid or broadsheet media website would be canned from google as quite often they scrape Reuters or re-publish standard press releases on their sites as newsworthy content. So i have great doubt that there is a penalty for it. You only have to look and you can see media sites duplication everywhere, everyday, but they get ranked. I just think that google dont rank the worst cases of spammy duplication. They still index though I notice. So considering the business niche has very much the same content layout replicated content, which rank well, is this duplicate flag such a great worry? Many businesses sell the same service to many locations and its virtually impossible to re write the services in a dozen or so different ways.
Technical SEO | | xtopher660 -
I'm redesigning a website which will have a new URL format. What's the best way to redirect all the old URLs to the new ones? Is there an automated, fast way to do this?
For example, the new URL will be: https://oregonoptimalhealth.com/about_us.html while the old one's were like this: http://www.oregonoptimalhealth.com/home/ooh/smartlist_1/services.html I have redirect almost 100 old pages to the correct new page. What's the best and easiest way to do this?
Technical SEO | | PolarisMarketing0 -
Setting preferred domain as www or none www
Way back before panda I used to rank for certain keywords pretty well. Of course like many others after panda I lost some of those rankings. I have been getting better since then so its not that bad. I was poking around in Google Webmaster Tools and I noticed something which I need some clarification in. History my site freescrabbledictionary.com used to be indexed as a none www. Then some time ago I can't remember when I set it to www. Tonight I was looking through my webmaster tools and I noticed something that did not make sense to me. In my content keywords section for the none www my list is as follows Content Keywords <form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET"> Keyword Significance 1. scrabble 2. words (2 variants) 3. dictionary 4. cheat 5. finder 6. friends 7. maker (2 variants) 8. noun 9. letter (2 variants) 10. hasbro 11. mattel 12. spear 13. found (2 variants) 14. sowpods 15. freescrabbledictionary 16. builder 17. affiliated 18. search 19. solver 20. lists </form> Then I looked at my www lists and its Content Keywords <form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET"> Keyword Significance 1. words (3 variants) 2. scrabble (2 variants) 3. letter (4 variants) 4. points 5. cheat (3 variants) 6. friends (2 variants) 7. finder (2 variants) 8. anagram (2 variants) 9. dictionary 10. tool (2 variants) 11. hasbro 12. mattel 13. spear 14. game (4 variants) 15. mobile 16. affiliated (3 variants) 17. berkshire 18. canada 19. calculations (5 variants) 20. coming (4 variants) </form> My none www version has the order (especially the first 5 keywords) that I want, my www version is no were near it. If I change back to the none www version could I possible see an change in rank? or can it effect it if I change it? I am starting to think I shot myself in the foot when I switched...
Technical SEO | | cbielich0 -
Can I redirect a URL that has a # in it? How?
Hi there - My web developer is saying that I can't do a URL redirect with a "#" in it. Currently, the URL is actually an anchored link within a page (which the URL indicates with a #). I want to change the content to a new URL, but our website links internally to the old URL, so we would need to do a URL redirect (assume 301). Can you tell me if this is possible and how? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | sfecommerce0