Found under domain.com but not www.domain.com

Happening in Google and MSN, not Yahoo.

[travelin cat]

We have been out of Google since 8/20/05 (pre jagger) we believe that we have corrected the issues that Google had with us (too much interlinking between our sites) and are now seeing the domain show up again... slowly... very very slowly.

The only thing is now all serps come back with domain.com... not www.domain.com as they did pre-ban.

Any clues as to whether this is important or not? if so, what would anyone suggest to correct this?

Further, about 80% of our serps in MSN come in with just domain.com, in Yahoo they are all www.domain.com.

thanks...

[tedster]

Yes, from what I've seen it can become important. Choose one version of the domain and 301 (permanent) redirect everything to that. Also use a <base href=""> element in the head section to keep everything on the same page.

There's been a LOT of conversation about this topic here. Check out a few of the other threads:
[google.com...]

[Stefan]

The only thing is now all serps come back with domain.com... not www.domain.com as they did pre-ban.

Any clues as to whether this is important or not? if so, what would anyone suggest to correct this?

It's important and might be a big part of your problem since last August. It's the canonicalization thing. By the sounds of it, G thinks there are different versions of various pages on your site, some with a www, and some without. There were other extenuating circumstances involved, probably, but the canonical part of it made things worse.

You have to force all requests to one particular URL per page. This can be either with or without a www subdomain, but it has to be one or the other. You can do it easily with mod_rewrite in .htaccess if your site is on Apache. If your site is on MS, you should consider changing it.

Best of luck with it, man.

[tedster]

If your site is on MS

If you have access to Internet Services Manager in IIS, this thread has all the details:
[webmasterworld.com...]

If you are on shared/virtual hosting, I know of no solution except moving to a different hosting arrangement.

[travelin cat]

Tedster and Stefan, thank you both very much. I'm looking in to 301's and base ref...

A quick question, would something like this work via htaccess:

RedirectMatch permanent ^/index.html$ [domain.com...]

This is how my host has 301's set up in their control panel

Also, would this be necessary for every page (there are over 400)?

Thanks again.

[Stefan]

I'm sure not the one to be giving advice on htaccess code, but I would suggest something more like:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.example\.org
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.org/$1 [R=301,L]

(Parsing it gives something like "if not www.example.org" then rewrite with www.example.org. The $1 takes care of all the pages as a variable. The redirect should be a 301. [L] means this is the end of the rule.)

That should take care of all the pages at once. Of course, that code is for adding www to the non-www URL's - you should check your incoming links, etc, to make sure that that's the best choice for you. As far as your control panel, I don't know because I always just edit the htaccess myself and send it directly to the html folder. You have to ensure that it goes up in ascii, so edit it and send it as a .txt, then rename it to .htaccess once it's there. The Apache forum is the best place to ask about details.

ADDED: The forum removed a space when I posted that code. Add a space between {HTTP_HOST} and!

[travelin cat]

Stefan,

Thanks again. I'll give it a shot...