Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I want to add a 301 redirect to send all non-www traffic to my www pages. However, my traffic had a big (relative) jump this week (~100%) and I'm worried I'll take a big hit with this change. I guess while Google figures it out, my site will go completely out of index?
Any thoughts on what is my best course of action? I think I know the answer is it is still worth it to do this but any comments or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:16 pm (utc) on June 22, 2007]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]
As the pages do appear (albeit supplemental), there's no reason at all for the site to 'disappear', but it may be a while before the serps are accurate.
if the 301 is set up correctly, however, that really doesn't matter - 99% of visitors won't notice a www appearing, and theothers are most unlikely to worry.
Do you notice the '/' appearing if you follow a link that doesn't have it? http://www.webmasterworld.com [webmasterworld.com]
'Both' sites are listed, therefore the site will be found - whichever direction he 301s - therefore no reason for anything other than a blip, if that.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I cannot, of course guarantee that; but I've not seen a 'failed 301' report for at least a couple of years except where the 301 has not been implemented correctly.
I am not saying 'don't do the google webmaster tools approach', but it is important to get it right for all search engines, not just Google. Then he can forget it and move on.
The non-www URLs will likely either drop straight into Supplemental (rather than just disappear forever) right away, or else will disappear from view for a few weeks and then later re-appear as Supplemental, and then hang around in the SERPs for about a year. There is no reason to worry about those. Any that appear in the SERPs will still bring visitors to your site, and your redirect will deliver them to the correct URL.
Once the redirect is in place, there is no more duplicate content. It will take a few weeks for Google to join the split PR back together. You can help that by making sure all internal links point at www URLs, as well as making sure incoming links point at the right version too.
This clearly argues in favor of redirecting www.example.com to example.com, and not the reverse. If the "www" pages are already supplemental, while the non-www pages are "showing OK," then any "blip" should be very minor.
Jim
Google does have all the pages; a couple of spiderings, and they'll update with no worry at all (as G1 says). And in the meantime, whatever shows in google will find the page, one way or another.
That's the glory of a well-done 301 ;)
If the www URLs are supplemental, I would never recommend doing a 301 redirect *to* the www domain. It is only when both versions are ranked and have PR that there's much to debate; If the PR of the two versions of the site are equal, then you may pick whichever you prefer for branding reasons (or even just personal preference). But if one has the overwhelming majority of the PR, or if the other has little or none or is marked Supplemental, then Google has essentially made the choice for you. Yes, that choice can be reversed, but that *will* be painful, and the switchover and recovery may take months.
zorgo has expressed concern about losing the pages which *are* indexed, so let's be careful here.
Jim
It has been indicated a number of times here it appears link weight passes through a single redirect, but not through multiple or 'stacked' redirects, so I would probably err on the side of caution and make sure I got everything done in a single ruleset.
Justin
Many non-www URLs will drop into Supplemental and stay there for up to a year. This is normal. Google uses Supplemental as a way to continue to show URLs that used to show content but now no longer do so... such as URLs that now just redirect elsewhere. Those non-www results will still bring a small amount of traffic and are NOT a problem.
