Yahoo Site explorer: Different results for www & non-www domain. Can we merge these?
-
When checking our domain on yahoo site explorer, different results are shown for www.theprintspace.de and theprintspace.de. We have done a 301 redirect, as we want to optimise our www.theprintspace.de domain. However, we have a lot more backlinks for theprintspace.de. Is there any way of merging the two, so we don't loose all the linkjuice we get for theprintspace.de and use those links to optimise www.theprintspace.de?
Thanks for your help!
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the fast reply, that's great news! We'll crawl our site to sse if everything is ok.
Have a good day!
-
Relative addresses are fine and make this type of change easier. The only update needed would be the base href and it sounds like yours already includes the www subdomain in which case you are all set.
Perform a crawl of your site to ensure nothing has been missed, and check any external sites under your control such as facebook, twitter, etc. along with any employee signatures.
-
Hi Ryan,
thanks for all your help so far, we've made most of the changes you suggested. However, I still have a question regarding
- review your site to ensure 100% of your internal links use the "www." domain
Our programmer uses relative addresses in the script for internal links, i.e.
.echte-fotoabzuege.php
instead of
www.theprintspace.de/echte-fotoabzuege.php
However, when hovering over a link on the site, the full address is shown.
Do we have to use the full link address in the script to optimize www.theprintspace.de?
Thanks!
-
Yes.
"footballboots.co.uk" and "www.footballboots.co.uk" are two separate web addresses. The first is the root domain address, while the second is the "www" subdomain. My domains have the www subdomain set up to mirror the root domain, which causes confusion in this area.
If your two domains exist as mirrors (i.e. you can access both without being redirected) then neither domain would receive the benefit of the others links. If there is a 301 in place, you would lose some link juice as with any redirect.
-
Erm if the website is indexed without the www but you are building banklinks to the domain with a www will this not be as effective?
Ok,
So in Google footballboots.co.uk is indexed,
The backlinks you start building are www.footballboots.co.uk
Does this cause problems when trying to rank for 'football boots'?
-
The 301 redirect is the solid solution. As long as it is properly implemented, you will be fine.
While many will share it is unnecessary to update your WMT since you have a redirect in place, I do suggest the setting be updated for two reasons:
-
This change lets Google/Bing know your preference directly, and they may update their information faster. Without the change, it may take a month for search engines to crawl your entire site and update each URL.
-
This change offers another level of protection in case your 301 is altered or removed for any reason.
-
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks very much for the fast reply. Really helpful!
At the moment, google indexes our theprintspace.de domain rather than our www.theprintspace.de domain. Would you suggest changing the indexing preference on webmaster tools to www.theprintspace.de or does it not matter, since we have a 301 redirect?
Thanks again for your help!
-
By implementing the 301 redirect you have taken the most important step which will allow you to retain 90% of the backlink value. The other steps to take are:
-
review your site to ensure 100% of your internal links use the "www." domain
-
review all of your site's social accounts, external blogs, etc. to ensure all content under your control uses the www version of the domain.
-
ensure your site's representatives use the www version of the domain in their signatures on external sites
-
contact sites which link to your site and ask them to update their links to the correct URL. This is a bit touchy and should probably only be done with sites for which you have an established relationship. If 1 in 10 sites you contact remove the link altogether, or make a typo error, you can loose the link.
-
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
-
PDF web traffic hitting our site
Hi there, Over the last few months our traffic has spiked due to irrelevant pdf documents sending us crap traffic, our bounce rate is sky high as well as other metrics. I don't want to just filter out this traffic in GA rather try and stop our site from being attacked. Any advice on a way forward would be great. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ICMPmarketing0 -
Difference between External links and anchor text?
What is the exact meaning of external links & anchor text and what is different between these?
Reporting & Analytics | | surabhi60 -
Exact match domains DOMINTATING the serps
For longer tail keywords with typical local monthly search volume of 50 or so, there are exact match domains that are just killing it. Take for instance "alabama registered agent", I'm showing www.alabamaregisteredagent.com in the first spot ahead of the state department, etc. This site has zero links in OSE (DA and PA 1) and is a very small site in general. Can anyone explain why this domain is doing so well?
Reporting & Analytics | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
How to setup Google Analytic goals that go to different urls?
I would like to setup my form's conversion rate as a goal in my Google Analytics account. The goal is complete when someone enters their information and hits submit. Logically, the "Thank you page" would be the destination url for the goal. My problem is that the thank you page is outside of the primary domain, for example, my site is: SiteExampl.com but the Thank you URL is thankyouurl.com Is it possible to setup a goal like this? If so how. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | christinarule0 -
Anyone notice a drop in results using site operator?
I set our site's preferred domain back on January 28. We had a www and non www domain being indexed. Since then, I've seen the number or results for our site site operator (site:) decline dramatically. Not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. So, I'm trying to see if it's unique to our site. My gut is that the numbers are probably leveling out to where they should be and the duplicates are falling out, but I would think that as I see number of results for non www decline, the number of results for www would increase. Any thoughts? Anyone else seeing fluctuations in results using site: ? Lisa
Reporting & Analytics | | Aggie0 -
Has anyone noticed a dramatic drop in direct visits year over year in GA across multiple sites?
I monitor about 10 websites in GA. Many of these sites are in a stable phase of their lifecycle. I've noticed this year that direct visits on all my sites and even friends sites have dropped by 20-60%. Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year? In every instance I have no penalties, notices, anything and the drop is made up completely of "direct visits".
Reporting & Analytics | | bradwayland0 -
Can't figure this ranking out..
Hi, This is puzzling me. I've been in the second/third position for a week or so for my best keyword. That is for Google US unpersonalized, which is the one that brings more traffic, as far as I understand. It can't get MUCH better. Well, I can be first, but second and third position is really awesome in my case (highly competitive keyword according to SEOMOZ PRO). Then, why on earth my traffic for that keyword was 8 times better a year ago?? I mean, a year ago I received an average of 800 visits per day and now I can barely reach 90 visits per day being in the second / third place. Visits can't increase from 90 to 800 just for increasing one spot. I've never seen in my stats such drop in my rankings. I thought that due to google updates my site was sent below the 20th position or something. But my I was shocked today when I saw that I still have the second/third position Am I crazy or this looks wrong? The page title and description that shows in google hasn't changed, so people looking for that keyword are seeing the same as one year ago. It is not a seasonal or time sensitive keyword. My best guess is that people are now always logged in and results are personalized. Don't know much about personalized results but I don't think you can optimize much for those. If that's the case, then how on earth can we optimize a page if everybody is using personalized results? Is there a way to improve your rankings in those cases? Thanks, Enrique
Reporting & Analytics | | enriquef0 -
Results Google in different browsers
I have changed one of my company pages. Now I saw that the Google position is different using IE of Firefox. In IE we are at position 1, in Firefox we are at position 4. Does anybody know, why this is? And how I could change this for different browsers? At the end the results are from Google.
Reporting & Analytics | | vliegticketsnl0