Confused about the www subdomain

Is it necessary to list if it's the only one?

[bears5122]

I'm probably overthinking this but I'm a little confused when going through my Adsense panel. Every site I own has www listed as a subdomain under it in Adsense. I'm not using any other sub-domains with the sites so it seems sort of meaningless.

Now my confusion comes when going into "Blocking Controls". It will list as following:

site1.com
www.site1.com
site2.com
www.site2.com

So which one do I make the changes in if I want to block a specific ad for instance? Do I have to edit site1.com and www.site1.com? Does editing site1.com control every subdomain (www.site1.com) underneath it?

Which brings me to the main question. Can I just remove the www subdomain under "Sites"? Is it necessary if that's the only subdomain being used? I'm not sure if I added the www when I started or if it just appears normally when adding a site.

I hope that makes some sense. It's not a huge deal but a little annoying when dealing with blocking controls and some of the reports.

[RedBar]

My simple answer is that I assume you have everything as example.com and that your www is pointed to the non-www?

If so, someone correct me if I am wrong, then you may as well delete www.example.com

I know I did add the www in the early noughties yet deleted them since I've never used the www prefix ever, and I mean since 1993.

For some reason I recollect that in the early AdSense days that I did include the www for "whatever" registration qualification.

[phranque]

@RedBar there are good reasons to use a www (or other) subdomain for your main site, primarily to allow cookieless domains for static assets, but that is another discussion for another subforum.

@bears5122 just to clarify the question, is the canonical domain for your main site(s) the www.example.com hostname(s)?

[leebow]

I’ve forced www. Since my site was made in 2005 - it helps for SEO to have all links going to the same page, because even in 2019 - google still sees links to site.eg/page with www. and without as different pages.

In my webmaster tools / search console, I have every option - with www, without www and same again for with https and http

I have my sitemaps in all options - and all the contents of my sitemaps obviously only link to https://www pages

I use htaccess to force www and https — and now, I use “page rules” in cloudflare with force https://www - this is a massive improvement as it reduces redirects and hobs, which improves your page speed.

BUT... it’s important to note that Adsense and googlebot will not look at your www sub directory for your robots.txt, ads.txt, and sitemap.xml (don’t believe the guides that they say they can navigate 1 redirect - I’ve had to email google support to get these things sorted - just let those bots get to those files without www)

You’ve got to setup a page rule in cloudflare to allow access to these files WITHOUT www.

Also add that rule in your htaccess file - googlebot and media partners should be able to access those 3 files at https://site

[edited by: not2easy at 7:06 pm (utc) on Dec 13, 2019]
[edit reason] de-linked for readability [/edit]

[not2easy]

Cloudflare may change these things but a normal 301 redirect gives Google's bots my ads.txt and robots.txt files no matter how they are requested. I do see a 301 before a 200 in my server logs, but if your canonical redirects are properly done, you don't normally (without Cloudflare anyway) need some extra rules.

Since @bears5122 has not mentioned using Cloudflare or even clarified whether there is a canonical redirect, it is good to know about the extra Cloudflare considerations, but may or may not be part of the OP problem.

[leebow]

That might have been true - but keep an eye out for a message in your Adsense account for not being able to access your ads.txt.

It’s related to www. - and it took Adsense support to get it resolved for me after YEARS of no problems. Htaccess redirect stopped google being able to crawl my ads.txt file.

@OP Just make sure you can get to /ads.txt and other txt/xml files without your www.
Especially if you force www like I do.

[RedBar]

there are good reasons to use a www (or other) subdomain for your main site, primarily to allow cookieless domains for static assets, but that is another discussion for another subforum.

Please start this discussion because in 25+ years I have never found this a necessity.

I am not saying you are wrong, quite simply for what / which reasons would it be necessary / applicable?

And what are "cookieless domains for static assets"?

[RedBar]

And what are "cookieless domains for static assets"?

Is this simply parking?

[phranque]

Please start this discussion because in 25+ years I have never found this a necessity.

I am not saying you are wrong, quite simply for what / which reasons would it be necessary / applicable?

And what are "cookieless domains for static assets"?

https://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#cookie_free

this shows as "deprecated" because Pagespeed Insights API Version 4 was shut down in May 2019, but that fact hasn't changed the underlying issues with web technology:
https://gtmetrix.com/serve-static-content-from-a-cookieless-domain.html [gtmetrix.com]