Www2 vs www problem
-
Hi,
I have a website that has an old version and a new version. The content is not duplicate on the different versions.
The point is that the old version uses www. and non-www before the domain and the new one uses www2.My questions is: Is that a problem and what should be done?
Thank you in advance!
-
Good luck!
-
Hey,
the non-www version redirect to the old version - I know, pretty poor. But this is a situation I inherited
So, I will try to do something because now all the link juice is going to the old version and dilutes because of the redirects.
Thanks for the help guys.
Especially you, Jane
-
Hi,
I doubt you will see too many SEO detriments to this, but that depends on how the site is configured re: the non-www version of the site. If you access http://domain.dk/, what happens? Are you redirected to www.domain.dk, www2.domain.dk, or does one of the two categories' content load on the non-www URL?
Google should simply treat www and www2 as different subdomains. I have not heard of ranking / indexing confusion based on using www1, www2 etc. but it's definitely the usability issue that would really bother me. Definitely good to work on convincing the client to hurry up with the complete redesign so you can get it all back on the www
-
Hi Jane,
I don't think that's possible. The client is a bit conservative in terms of changing the domain URLs. I think we just need to hurry up convincing them to finish the last section redesign. I was just wondering what the consequences now would be because of this www2. - referring consequences for the categories on it.
-
Hi Tihomir,
Is there a way you can rename the subdomains? E.g., name the old design / category something like http://categoryname.domain.dk/ and have the new content on http://www.domain.dk/?
-
Hi Jane,
Thanks for the comment.
The point is that the company, that possesses the website, want for now to leave the old design for this category and move the other two on a new design (which resides in www2). The new categories are on www2 and their tabs from www redirect.
-
Hi Tihomir,
Are you planning to give the remaining category a facelift too?
It would be best to include all three categories under the same subdomain (e.g. the "www." subdomain) and place them in folders, e.g. www.domain.dk/category1, www.domain.dk/category2 and www.domain.dk/category3. www2 isn't technically damaging but it's bad from a usability point of view. It's incredibly unlikely to be remembered, for one, and even more likely to be mistyped as www.
-
Thanks a lot Rickus,
I answered together with Alex's answer
-
Thanks for the response Alex and Rickus,
The point is that the website have three main categories. Two of them had been facelifted and moved to www2.domain.dk. Their tabs on www.domain.dk redirect to www2. The point is that on the www.domain.dk left the first category which is still not redesigned.
So, we basically can't remove any of these 3 categories - we end up with one category on the www & non-www version and with two categories on the www2 version. -
Do you still need the old domain? If not you should make the new website reside at www. or non-www.
Imagine telling people your URL "it's at www2.example.com" - most people don't know anything other than www. so it could cause confusion.
Also, if you have the same content residing at the www. and non-www. versions of your website, the two versions will be conisdered duplicate content so you should make sure only one exists.
-
Hi there Tihomir,
Although the www to www2 differs the .domain.com will still be the same, this will be seen as a duplicate domain in a way by Google or any other search engine. And will definitely damage ranking of your site.
So the best thing to do here is to remove the old site completely or just edit it so that google cant crawl the site if it is a necessity to have the old one live.
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
-
"non-WWW" vs "WWW" in Google SERPS and Lost Back Link Connection
A Screaming Frog report indicates that Google is indexing a client's site for both: www and non-www URLs. To me this means that Google is seeing both URLs as different even though the page content is identical. The client has not set up a preferred URL in GWMTs. Google says to do a 301 redirect from the non-preferred domain to the preferred version but I believe there is a way to do this in HTTP Access and an easier solution than canonical.
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en GWMTs also shows that over the past few months this client has lost more than half of their backlinks. (But there are no penalties and the client swears they haven't done anything to be blacklisted in this regard. I'm curious as to whether Google figured out that the entire site was in their index under both "www" and "non-www" and therefore discounted half of the links. Has anyone seen evidence of Google discounting links (both external and internal) due to duplicate content? Thanks for your feedback. Rosemary0 -
Problems with Wordpress and Yoast SEO Plugin
Hi, I've been working with a Wordpress site and the Wordpress SEO plugin for a few months now and I've managed to get pretty decent results for some of the keywords I was targeting, however since last week I've lost all my rankings sharply and everything dropped out. This had happened once before and the problem was that the plugin was somehow stopped but not this time. I've had a look through all of the MOZ resources and I cannot find what the problem might be. Page optimization hasn't changed and the on page rankings are the same here. Everything seems to be the same except that all my top 10 ranking disappeared. I'm new to all of this and I'm still learning so I'd appreciate if anyone could help me on this. I'm up for trying any ideas you might have but I've tried almost everything I could. I've reinstalled, updated and done everything I could with the plugin, I've checked that Google is indexing the pages and it is. I've monitored for errors on the pages and critical issues, nothing major to report so I don't know anymore what to do. Thank you so much in advance for your help. M3rgAcQ paFNOlb
Technical SEO | | rodcunha0 -
Robots.txt | any SEO advantage to having one vs not having one?
Neither of my sites has a robots.txt file. I guess I have never been bothered by any particular bot enough to exclude it. Is there any SEO advantage to having one anyways?
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Local searh results instant preview photo problem
A search result that contains my google plus / places page in the local results is not displaying photos correctly in the preview. It shows an image that appears to represent a broken link or missing image, however, when you click on the "See Photos" link it to takes you to the G+ page that displays the photos without any issues. I also checked the google places account and the photos appear fine in my dashboard. It's seems like maybe a 3rd party uploaded photos or something? It may have to do with the recent upgrade to pages at Google +? (Thats another story, thanks for making me create a circular logo and a cover photo that doesn't style well in your mobile app) Anyway, any thoughts? Where are these photos coming from, plus or places account? I submitted the question on google groups and a non googler told me to submit photos from a unrelated account.. This seems like gaming the system to me and when I looked into it, it takes me to the Google + page.. Search URL - I am first result in local, Yale Creek Seasonal Care. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=new+market+mn+snow+removal&oq=new+market+mn+snow+removal&gs_l=hp.3...1801.1801.0.2686.1.1.0.0.0.0.143.143.0j1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.5.hp.nKsMdxTGiW0 Also, I noticed the G+ account says service area is 20 miles from address while I specifically selected an area greater than that in my places account.. So what is it plus or places?!?!? The way they are rolling out this move to plus is frustrating! As a consumer, I prefer listings without the plus page!!
Technical SEO | | dwallner0 -
Changing from ocpatentlawyer.com to www.ocpatentlawyer.com
I want to change my web address from ocpatentlawyer.com to www.ocpatentlawyer.com. My understanding is that google treats these two web addresses as different web addresses. My blog is a pr 5 website. I don't want to make the switch and find out that google no longer ranks my pages and posts anymore.
Technical SEO | | jamesjd80 -
Www vs non-www which is better?
Is it better to have all your pages point to the www version or non www version.
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Sub pages Vs subdomain Pagerank flow.
I Have Question about Pagerank flow:
Technical SEO | | tommytai
If ihave a site :domain.com and i have 2 solutions like:
Solution #1: Quote: | domain.com/blog and domain.com/video if i try to do :
Root domain only link to
domain.com/video and
domain.com/blog | Solution #2: Quote: | Root domain only link to
video.domain.com and
blog.domain.com | So <acronym title="Google PageRank">Pr</acronym> domain.com/blog = <acronym title="Google PageRank">Pr</acronym> blog.domain.com ?
and <acronym title="Google PageRank">PR</acronym> domain.com/video = <acronym title="Google PageRank">Pr</acronym> video.domain.com ? And don't know why a subdomain of blogspot or Wordpress ranking easier than a new domain like:keyword.wordpress.com and keyword.com So What Wordpress pass to keyword.wordpress.com ?0 -
Duplicate Homepage: www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.aspx
Hi, I have a question regarding our client's site, http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ on ASP.net. Google has indexed both www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx creating a duplicate content issue. We have added
Technical SEO | | flarson
to the default.aspx page. Now, because www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx are the same page on the actual backend the code is on the http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ when I view the code from the page loaded in a brower. Is this a problem? Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url. We cannot do a 301 redirect from www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx to www.outsolve-hr.com/ because this causes an infinite loop because on the backend they are the same page. So my question is two-fold: Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url. Is the rel="canonical" the best solution to fix the duplicate homepage issue on ASP. And lastly, if Google has not indexed duplicate pages, such as https://www.outsolve-hr.com/DEFAULT.aspx, is it a problem that they exist? Thanks in advance for your knowledge and assistance. Amy0