Missing the "www" caused my site to drop from #3 to #65?

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Missing the "www" caused my site to drop from #3 to #65?

fathom777

7:28 am on Apr 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

On a number of data centers (like 4) my site is showing that it dropped from the first page down to the sixth page.

I notice on these data centers that rather than the normal listing:

Whatever The Title May Be
Some random blurb describing whatever the product happens to be.
www.companyname.com

It is listed as:

Whatever The Title May Be
Some random blurb describing whatever the product happens to be.
companyname.com

Notice how the www is missing on the second listing. It also goes directly to the domain without www when you click on the listing! It shows up the normal way on all of the rest of the data centers. We have dropped SIGNIFICANTLY on these that dont have www.

What is going on here? As far as I can tell, we are the only company listed that way. What do you think?

g1smd

7:09 pm on Apr 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

Do a forum or Google search for "google duplicate content" or for "301 redirect" or for "canonical URL" or for "non-www and www" and see that this question is asked at least several times per week.

It is a major problem, but one that can be fixed with just few lines of code in your server configuration files. Once the redirect is in place, it will take Google a month or so to start fixing things.

youfoundjake

6:26 am on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

For what ever its worht, I didn't have the redirect in my htaccess. I went ahead and added it. Man, I'm so glad that not only did I find this site, but everyone is contributing.
Thanks all

Dayo_UK

8:39 am on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

>>>>It is a major problem, but one that can be fixed with just few lines of code in your server configuration files. Once the redirect is in place, it will take Google a month or so to start fixing things.

Very optimistic g1smd.

Google may start displaying queries to domain.com as www.domain.com in a month or so of the redirect - however, as is Googles way - the domain.com will still exist for a lot longer - and may come back to haunt as a supplemental or url only entry.

Also the split site situation that seems to be caused and results in lost ranking can seemingly effect that site indefinetly.......(well lots of people are still waiting for the fix - so indefinite so far)

texasville

5:14 pm on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

youfoundjake-
I also suggest you search-"header check" and find a site you can check that you performed the 301 properly. So many here have made mistakes. You'll want a "200" to be sure it is right. But read all the definitions they will provide. Good Luck.

g1smd

6:58 pm on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

Using WebBug set to HTTP/1.1 you should get 301 for non-www accesses and 200 OK only for www accesses.

Make sure that the redirect applies to all pages of the site too. That is, a request for domain.com/some.page.html is redirected to www.domain.com/some.page.html each time.

rbacal

8:20 pm on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

Using WebBug set to HTTP/1.1 you should get 301 for non-www accesses and 200 OK only for www accesses.

Wonder if anyone has two secs to check the headers I'm getting? Did an htaccess redirect to go from www.myplace.com to myplace.com. March 6 (and up till now), we've lost about 90% of traffic and almost all google traffic.

Using WebBug set to HTTP/1.1 you should get 301 for non-www accesses and 200 OK only for www accesses.

Here's the headers I get via samspade (I took out the unrelated stuff) when I did www.mysite.com.

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 18:17:05 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.51 (Fedora)
Location: [mysite.com...]
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://mysite.com/">here</a>.</p>

Header for mysite.com yields a 200 ok status

g1smd

8:52 pm on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

That looks like it is working, but I would normally redirect in the other direction; from non-www to www.

Make sure now that all internal links include the correct domain details. Use something like Xenu LinkSleuth to check the site.

rbacal

10:34 pm on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

That looks like it is working, but I would normally redirect in the other direction; from non-www to www.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I know it usually goes in the other direction, but we standardized on the non-www a while back. I haven't read anything that would suggest an advantage to having the www version.

Regardless, due to history, which ever way we went would be imperfect.

tedster

10:40 pm on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

The only advantage to using the with-www as your site's standard is that many/most people automatically add the www -- and this may include webmasters who link to you. So you would be putting those lovely, valuable inbound links through one redirect right at the start. If for any reason you redirect a url a second time, then PR, link context and so on may not be transfering all the way through the redirect chain. Of course, the same would be true in the other direction as well, it's just that the common assumption is to add the www.

However, there's no technical advantage I know of to chosing one or the other.

g1smd

11:07 pm on Apr 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

I treat the logic like this:

I register domain.com and then I put individual services on sub-domains as follows: mail.domain.com and ftp.domain.com and www.domain.com and so on.

Lorel

4:21 pm on May 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

I haven't read anything that would suggest an advantage to having the www version.

I read somewhere that Yahoo drops sites using the non-www version. Don't remember where I saw it but you might research that.

Also, it should depend on what version Google has indexed not necessarily what you prefer. If google has indexed the www and you set it to be non-www that may be why your traffic has dopped so drastically and may take awhile for Google to get it working.

g1smd

5:35 pm on May 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

>> >> ...it will take Google a month or so to start fixing things... << <<

>> Very optimistic g1smd. <<

I only said that they may start to fix things in about a month. I gave no comment about how long they might take to finish it.

If there are no supplemental results, then 3 to 6 months is about right. If supplemental results are involved, it is possible that they will still be hanging around in 5 years time...

g1smd

5:37 pm on May 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

Yahoo indexes non-www sites just fine.

I am aware of a site that is fully indexed as non-www in Yahoo, and fully indexed as www in Google.

There is no 301 redirect in place, and no base tag on any of the pages. They are heading for big trouble at some time in the future...

sore66

6:46 pm on May 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

I have a brand new site URL.

I am submitting it everywhere (including google and yahoo) as domain.com

That's what I prefer.

If "most" of my inbound links are that way then great.

If my ISP has the server set up to automatically redirect www.domain.com and domain.com, it won't really matter will it?

Or should I set up everything as www.domain.com cause that's how "a few" webmasters make link back to me----and it's what google "refers"?