example.com and www.example.com both appear in WMT

[Tonearm]

I just logged into WMT for the first time in a while and www.example.com shows up as it should, but example.com is also listed. All of my example.com/* pages do redirect to www.example.com/*. Is it safe to delete the example.com site from WMT?

[grippo]

Safe? Sure, only that after deletion you can't use WMT for exaple.com.

[bwnbwn]

tonearm leave it in there Google requires you verify both to select your display prefernece in your WMT. This is normal.

Make sure you verify the non www one as well. Then set how you want the domain to be displayed in your account as grippo said.

[g1smd]

Look at both of the reports. They are separate for at least crawl rate, crawl errors, and incoming links.

Especially links to non-www URLs are listed separately from the list of links to www URLs - and so they should.

[lucy24]

:: detour to wmt followed by toggle to without-www name ::

Whole new set of Crawl Errors, including one truncated page name ("www.example.com/directory/pa" like that). Which links from one of those ### domain-analysis sites-- under the general heading of the WITH www form of my domain name. Now, I ask you...

:: further detour to snicker loudly as I open page source to look for spurious link, and find Advice section set to {display: none} ::

Ah, found it. Perhaps the site owners don't realize that {display: none} has no effect in the page source? They've got a <wbr>

:: further detour here to HTML 5 [dev.w3.org] where I learn that <wbr> is an optional space, sort of a hyphenless soft hyphen ::

smack dab in the middle of a word. Not, please note, at the morphological boundary in the precise center of the word, but just at a random location partway along.

Best line:

Pay attention to the following domains: en.wikipedia.org, www.urbandictionary.com, www.omniglot.com in the block "<a href='#{fragment}'>Competitors for www.example.com</a>". Their Alexa Traffic Rank better than yours. Take a look at them. You can see what they do best, and you use these things on your site.

[edited by: tedster at 10:26 pm (utc) on Jul 1, 2012]

[Str82u]

I think everyone told you it's ok that the domain in WMT is there like that, if not, It's ok that the domain is there like that. I've never had the them come up on it's own, but in reverse, If you were to "Change of address" the domain, it will ask you to verify the non-www version which does include it afterward in the list of your domains. It's ok that it's there, I'd leave it and as someone else mentioned, it will give you the ability to see the differences that Google MIGHT see between the two variations of the site.

[Tonearm]

Thanks everyone. Is it normal that I get an exclamation point instead of a check under Server Connectivity for non-www?

Make sure you verify the non www one as well. Then set how you want the domain to be displayed in your account as grippo said.

How can I check to see if non-www is verified? My preferred domain is set to www under both "sites".

[lucy24]

If they're both already listed, they've already been verified and you don't need to do anything more. Just don't delete that google gobbledygook file; they re-check it periodically.