Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
As an experiment I took one of those and attempted to fix it via htaccess rewrites, and what happened was twice we got completely dumped from the serps (it's back now).
With the new domain prefs option, I'm trying to figure out the best way to address the tangled mess I created -- use domain prefs, use htaccess, or use both.
I really need some advice on this. If I make the wrong decision, it's possible I'd lose all our traffic from all our sites.
So,
1) Will the use of domain preferences solve canonical problems and perceptions of dupe content?
2) I'd rather not do htaccess redirections. Should I do that also?
Any advice, suggestions welcome. Right now, I'm somewhat paralyzed on this issue (and have been for months).
1) Will the use of domain preferences solve canonical problems and perceptions of dupe content?
The service is certainly supposed to do that. But it's very new, and has no track record to report on. If a site is already high traffic, I usually avoid playing around without a compelling reason. After all, no-www and with-www are just two versions of a url. So one gets filtered out -- no big deal in my mind, ESPECIALLY if the traffic is already healthy.
Beware of the "SEO flavor of the month", that's what I say. Still, if PR is split into two piles, then this new feature just "might" help sort that out. I would study the site closely and see if there is really anything that needs fixing. Keep your eye on the ball -- the business goals. Old saying: "It's hard to remember that you want to drain the swamp when your up to your ass in alligators."
2) I'd rather not do htaccess redirections. Should I do that also?
301 redirection has a longer track record than the Sitemaps canonical preference option. In recent times I've only seen good reports about the htaccess fix, but a while ago a few people did report having troubles. We did a "no-www" to "with-www" redirect for one domain this summer -- a domain that was pretty tangled up in Google. We saw a strong improvement after 2 weeks.
But you already had a bad experience with this approach, so I understand your hesitation. It's born of real experience, not theory, and there can be wisdom in that. So again, I would ask if there is really something to fix here? Or are the sites in question still performing well.
it's possible I'd lose all our traffic from all our sites.
I suggest that even if you decide to take both steps, take them one at a time, and on one site at a time.
Still, if PR is split into two piles, then this new feature just "might" help sort that out. I would study the site closely and see if there is really anything that needs fixing. Keep your eye on the ball -- the business goals. Old saying: "It's hard to remember that you want to drain the swamp when your up to your ass in alligators."
Thanks. Good advice. I'm going to experiment with the domain preferences first, and see what happens.
I know that the google advisors have talked a bit about the domain preferences here, but I still can't garner enough detail to know if it will solve the canonical problem
The concern is the PR split, since for the oldest sites, incoming links are definitely split between the www.version and the non www.
I can experiment with a couple of sites that don't generate much sales or other revenue. I hate to touch the more lucrative sites, which are the oldest. I'd like to redesign them, but even that I've held off on for fear of losing what I have in terms of rankings. Man, those old sites are shabby looking by today's standards.
<edit reason - fix quote formatting>
[edited by: tedster at 6:55 pm (utc) on Aug. 16, 2006]
