Canonical root issues. What is the test?

[Broadway]

I've just performed a Google search using the terms:

site:example.com

The search has listed all of the indexed pages of my site. I looked at each SERP listing and the URL associated with each and every one began with www. (as in www.example.com).

Does this mean that everything is ok with my site and I don't have any canonical root issues (as in duplicate content problems because of www and non-www listings)?

[edited by: tedster at 11:17 pm (utc) on May 4, 2007]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it cannot be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

It sounds like you don't have a canonical problem -- for now. A little protection against future trouble is still a good idea.

[g1smd]

I rarely look at PR for anything at all, but you might also like to see what PR Google reports for both www and non-www for both of / and index.html (or whatever you index file is called) too. That's four checks in total.

All of the PR on one, and none on the other three is probably a good sign (they are using one and ignoring all of the others).

The same PR assigned to ALL of them might also be a good sign (they have associated all the URLs and treat them all as one).

Differing PR across them is a bad sign. it shows split PR for your site. The cure is redirection to the canonical URL for all of the others.

[Robert Charlton]

Canonical root issues. What is the test?

You might want to do server header checks for your www and non www default urls. If the www version is your preferred canonical, and the non-www version is redirected properly, the check should return the following status messages...

http://www.example.com/ - status 200 OK
http://example.com/ - status 301 Moved Permanently; location http://www.example.com/

If the server is not set up properly, either both of the above will return "200 OK," or (and here there are various possible combinations) the www version will generally return a "302 Found." I've seen setups where both the www and non-www versions show a 302 Found (as when they're both redirected to a landing page of some sort, like home.htm).

You should get only one 200 OK response for your canonical, and all variants, including index.html, etc, should show a 301 with the location at your preferred canonical. Anything else means youre in line for problems.

Even if you're not yet showing problems on Google, that doesn't mean you don't have them. Do some reading on this thread...

Duplicate Content - Get it right or perish
Setting out guidelines for a site clean of duplicate content
[webmasterworld.com...]

[g1smd]

You should also redirect named index pages to a bare trailing-slash URL, and that redirect should also force the canonical domain, so that you do not form a redirection chain.

[alexey9]

My sites were banned in December. All sites are situated on one domain. All subdomains have their own IP.

I'm sure www vs non-www was on of the reasons of ban, because before ban Google never showed me pages with 'www', but now it shows both with 'www' and without 'www'.

I've just checked my sites with server header check tool as Robert Charlton said. I have these results.

For main domain:
http://www.example.com - 200 OK
http://example.com - 200 OK
http://www.example.com/ - 200 OK
http://www.example.com/index.htm - 200 OK

For subdomains:
[subdomain.example.com...] - Error has been occured during opening...
[subdomain.example.com...] - 200 OK
[subdomain.example.com...] - 200 OK
[subdomain.example.com...] - 200 OK

The first question is how can I setup redirects for all subdomains and main domain?

Also, I'd like to know should I continue to use non-standard index pages (like cars.htm) instead of default index.htm or it really doesn't matter?

And the last question. What I should do after I will setup redirects properly? Wait or write to Google about it?

Thanks.

[Robert Charlton]

The first question is how can I setup redirects for all subdomains and main domain?

That's a large discussion by itself, going far beyond the subject of this thread. WebmasterWorld in fact has several technical forums that deal with the details, depending upon your server type.

Assuming that you have an Apache server, and that it's set up to permit using mod_rewrite, this might be an excellent starting point....

A guide to fixing duplicate content & URL issues on Apache
How to canonicalize all of your URLs with a single redirect
[webmasterworld.com...]

Also, I'd like to know should I continue to use non-standard index pages (like cars.htm) instead of default index.htm or it really doesn't matter?

This question is on topic. You don't want to have more than one url for a given page. Chances are that most people who link to your default home page are going to link to a canonical form... ie, to...

http://example.com/
or to...
http://www.example.com/

Adding cars.html is no different than adding index.html... you're confusing the issue.

You might consider naming one of your directories /cars/ ... in which case you might have this as a correct canonical form...

http://www.example.com/cars/

And the last question. What I should do after I will setup redirects properly? Wait or write to Google about it?

Make sure before you set up the redirects that you also clean up the code on your site that links to the incorrect forms... eg, change your "index.html" links to "/".

Once your redirects are set up, Google should find them.

I don't think it's remotely possible for Google to provide the private support you're imagining when you ask about writing to them about it.

[alexey9]

Thanks for answers Robert. I finally found codes that work with my server (other codes do not work). Thank you very much. I did setup those codes to all my sites.

One last question. Just want ot be sure. Should I redirect:
[subdomain.example.com...]

to

[subdomain.example.com...]

or it does not make duplicate content for Google?

[g1smd]

Your server should already be issuing a 301 redirect to add the trailing / for all requests where it is missing.

[alexey9]

Can I check this somehow? I tried server header check tool and both http://www.example.com/ and http://www.example.com shows 200 OK status.