When choosing GWT preferred domain its asking for re-verification?
-
Trying to set a preferred domain in GWT, and the site is verified via Google Analytics and meta tag in the code, but still asks:
Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://site.org/. Please verify http://site.org/.
Tried looking for answer to no avail, am I missing anything?
-
Thanks again Devanur, same to you!
-
Understood my friend. By propagation, I meant the propagation of the sitemap.xml file for newly added preferred-version of the site and yes, you are absolutely correct. It takes a while for Google to get the stats for the preferred version. Yes, I knew you would be having a 301 in place already, I mentioned about it just in case
Wish you good luck for all your endeavors.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
By propagating I meant all the statistics currently up, not in a sense of DNS propagation, it takes a while for Google to crawl and the stats to the GWT dashboard. But its not really hard to re-set that up, just dont really see a reason now that the old profile shows the preferred choice selected.
Yes, 301 perm redirect set up
-
You just need to add the sitemap for the preferred version and refresh the page. All your sitemap info will be readily available. Here we don't need to bother about it propagating or anything of that sort. As the sitemap.xml is still there where it was (in the root folder), nothing has changed for Google.
If you have not done this already, you should go in for a 301 permanent redirection from your non-preferred of your site to your preferred-version.
-
Hmm, I actually did. and it is still there under my original profile, and with my preferred selection. Its just that I have to add the sitemap to the new account and wait until it propagates with all the info and crawl stats/errors.
Ill wait a few days and see if it changes. Or is it a bad idea?
-
Good to hear that my friend. Please do not delete the newly added non-www version of your website as you will not be able to set the preferred domain without it. Just leave it as it is.
You can access your preferred domain by clicking on it to get all the stats in GWMT account.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
Great worked like a charm... Now I just delete the new profile that I had just created as the initial profile states my correct preferred domain now, correct?
Many Thanks Devanur!!
-
Hi Vadim,
Yes you need to get both the non-www and www versions of your website verified in GWMT account to be able to set the preferred domain. Its as simple as adding your site without www to the account and hit the Verify this site option. That's it. As you would have your www version already verified, getting the non-www version of your website doesnot require to go through the verification process like uploading the html file or adding the verification meta tag.
Just add your site without www by clicking the ADD A SITE button and click the Verify this site option and you should be good.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Local site under generic domain
Howdy Mozers, We have main website on .com domain and local websites for each language like .es, .fr, .in etc. We decided to move all local sites under main domain .com using subdirectories with gTLDs. One of the local sites has a manual penalty. Right now we are redirecting local site which have penalty using 302 redirect. So my question is. Will 302 redirect hurt our main site? Is there any other way to redirect visitors from local site without passing penalty? We have few thousands monthly users who are still using local domain links to get to our site, so we can't remove redirect at all. Best Regards,
Technical SEO | | juris_l
Juris0 -
Undo a 301 or Starting New Domain?
Hi Guys & Gals, I have a question I'd appreciate your input on. Quick History
Technical SEO | | Nobody1560986989723
When I first started in web design it was just me and a couple of clients. I had a website based on my name on the domain moxby.org.uk. The only 'SEO' work done on it was a bit of on-site work, various links based on forum and blog activity I was involved in (genuine involvement not crappy link building) and of course, building websites with a credit in the footer. When we got serious about the business we considered and finally put in place a new website, new branding and 301'd old URLs to their shiny new location on the new domain: _summitweb.net _(put in place about 12 months ago) Ranks were pretty much maintained and until recently we ranked well locally (still figuring the fallout from the last week or so's changes). The Question I would like to build a personal website, well I'm going to anyway. But as it's a personal/showcase website I need a personal URL for it and my natural choice would be my old url moxby.org.uk. However it is not that simple because summitweb.net is benefitting from redirected links and I don't want to harm our business' rankings just to reclaim a personal URL. So... is there benefit or would it be to my detriment to undo the 301 and build a website on moxby.org.uk or would it, in fact, just make more sense to buy a new domain and have a clean slate?0 -
Geo Domains & SEO Issues
Hi Is there issues to duplicate content on geo specific domains. For example we have a client with a .co.uk site who wants to create a .ie website for the local market, rather than sending them to the UK site. The content would be duplicated with limited customization. What issues would you for-see and how could they be overcome? Thank you
Technical SEO | | RadicalMedia0 -
Should we 301 redirect our old domain to the new domain
We have a product that when started was under the domain appnowgo.com. We've since changed the name and the domain is now knackhq.com. The latter domain doesn't rank nearly as well as the former for many of the keywords we are targeting. For example... "online database builder" and "web app builder" are two of those keywords. Obviously having app in the domain is not a bad thing but it is our old name. The question is, should we 301 the appnowgo.com domain to knackhq.com? Or should we use that better rank and just link users to knackhq.com from the appnowgo.com site until we can increase our ranking for knackhq.com? We don't plan to update the content on appnowgo.com anymore and we obviously don't want to drop off rank if at all possible. Thanks! Eric
Technical SEO | | sitestrux0 -
Domain "Forwarded"?
Hi SEOMoz! The company I work for has a website, www.accupos.com, but they also have an old domain which is not used anymore called http://accuposretail.com/ These two sites had duplicate content so I requested the OLD site (http://accuposretail.com/) be redirected to accupos.com to eliminate the dupe content. Unfortunately, I do not understand completely what happened but when they performed this forwarding the accuposretail.com URL is still in use. Now it just displays EXACTLY what accupos.com displays and not something similar. The tech team told me it is forwarded but I can't help but see the URL still in the search box on top. Is this unacceptable? The actual URL has to forward and change to the accupos.com URL in order to not be duplicate content, correct? I have limited experience in this. Please let me know if we are good to go, or if I need to tell them more action is required. Thanks! Derek M
Technical SEO | | DerekM880 -
Migrating to a subdirectory in the same domain
Hi! I have a new version of my website, running with a different CMS (joomla). In order to install the new CMS while not loosing my all content and links I was forced to install the new site in a subdirectory. So the old website was http://www.mydomain.com And the new one is http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory I had redirected http://www.mydomain.com to http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory but I am not sure if that is correct, or if it will generate SEO problems. I named the subdirectory with a keyword, at least to have any advantage of something that to my short knowledge looks bad... What do you think? Another question... I understand that it is a good SEO rule to optimize each page for a different keyword. Is it a problem if http://www.mydomain.com is not optimized for anything? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ociosu0 -
Why the rapid drop in Domain Authority?
I couple weeks ago I switched my website from Drupal to a Wordpress CMS: Martial Arts Austin My rankings have remained the same, but the Domain Authority has plummeted from like 29 to 21. I know this is small fry, but I don't want my business to drop in ranking. The URL's were kept exactly the same, with the internal links and copy also kept the same with few additions. Also, according to Open Site Explorer, the site's stronger pages have now averaged out with the weaker and unused pages so they all now share the same Page Authority - that doesn't seem right. Is there reason for concern? Did I screw something up, or am I making too much of this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | OhYeahSteve1 -
Duplicate content across multiple domains
I have come across a situation where we have discovered duplicate content between multiple domains. We have access to each domain and have recently within the past 2 weeks added a 301 redirect to redirect each page dynamically to the proper page on the desired domain. My question relates to the removal of these pages. There are thousands of these duplicate pages. I have gone back and looked at a number of these cached pages in google and have found that the cached pages that are roughly 30 days old or older. Will these pages ever get removed from google's index? Will the 301 redirect even be read by google to be redirected to the proper domain and page? If so when will that happen? Are we better off submitting a full site removal request of the sites that carries the duplicate content at this point? These smaller sites do bring traffic on their own but I'd rather not wait 3 months for the content to be removed since my assumption is that this content is competing with the main site. I suppose another option would be to include no cache meta tag for these pages. Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | jmsobe0