Canonical Fix Questions - on the IIS Server and in Webmaster Tools

[latimer]

We seem to have the canonical issue with more pages in google as mydomain.com then www.mydomain.com than. Our vast majority of inbound links are to the www.mydomain.com site, so that is the one we would go with if we need to select one or the other for page rank.

Reading through the thread on the canonical issues and solutions here [webmasterworld.com...] there was a post about the "preferred domain" setting at google's webmaster tools that allows for selecting "display both" for www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com. Would this setting take care of the problem? We are currently set at the default "Don't set an association".

Our sites are on MS-IIS/6.0. What is the best way to implement a site wide redirect as mentioned in the thread here [webmasterworld.com...] so that all the pages from mydomain.com land on the www.mydomain.com pages?

Anything we should know about applying either or both of these solutions to the problem?

Can we consider the problem fixed once the mydomain.com pages are no longer appearing in the google index?

Any views on this appreciated.

[tedster]

I do not suggest letting this canoncal fix exclusively in Google's hands - definitely do the redirect on your own server to be certain it's handled properly. This is also Matt Cutt's recommendation, by the way.

On IIS, you can accomplish the canonical fix by going to Internet Services Manager.

1. After www.example.com is set up as a website, now
set up example.com (without the www) as a website.

2. Select the example.com website in Internet Services
Manager and go into the properties.

3. In the Home Directory tab, change the option button
"When connecting to this resource the content should
come from" to be "A redirection to a URL".

4. In the "Redirect to" box, enter http://www.example.com$S$Q
(A note about the variables used here:
$S retains the requested URL's full filepath
$Q retains any query string present in the request.)

5. Check the checkbox that says "A permanent redirection
for this resource." This is a key step, or else you will
create a 302 redirect rather than a 301.

[edited by: tedster at 8:36 pm (utc) on Aug. 31, 2007]

[g1smd]

What Tedster said.

Fix the issues on your site first. Set up the required redirects and make sure that all internal pages link to the correct URLs too.

Xenu LinkSleuth can help you a lot with this task.

See how things go for a month or so.

If things aren't progressing, also use the Webmaster Tools options. I would not use those first, nor would I exclusively rely on them.

[latimer]

Thanks