Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My rankings at 2 of the big 3 SE's have improved and my AS revenue has shot up in the last few days. I haven't made any other changes that might account for it on my end. I realize that the engines are always tweaking and that many other variables are in constant flux as well. But hey, I'm a believer in the 301 "fix" now!
>> I did it and my income rose.
Sorry, we don't know there's a definite connection.
> Although other variables could be at work here as well, clearly the redirect has made a big difference.
I'm sorry - it's not "clear". Yes, the redirects could have helped or they could have played no part in the traffic increase. It's always worth being cautious about treating conjecture as fact.
When you say "all sites but one" can you confirm that all the sites
1) Did have a www/non-www related dup problem in Google (and how you checked for it)
2) All of them show a sudden jump in traffic and
3) That the one site you didn't do the redirect for .... has not improved.
>> My rankings at 2 of the big 3 SE's have improved (because of this)
Which two? I thought Google was the only big one with this particular problem. If traffic improved at two SEs it's even more likely that this has nothing to do with your 301s.
I'm glad you're doing better ... but wrongly identifying the reasons for your success doesn't help you with achieving future successes.
If your site is appearing as two different listings in our search results, we suggest consolidating these listings
But who said we have to obey Google on everything they "suggest"?
Notice also they said nothing about this raising your PageRank, it just said it will make it "more accurate" which, at least in theory, might mean lowering its rank (though intitively it would sound more like it will raise your rank (or keep it as it is) as a result of consolidation).
If your ranks gets better, not only PageRank, but I mean your position in SERPs for your keywords, then this would mean more money. But that is if your rank does increase.
I am not sure about money incerase, but a major headache of adsense collapse script not working is now solved.
The script used to work every well with www. because i used the www. root, and it hd problems without the www root. Now it works beautifully.
Cheers,
CaboWabo
I do not know that the 301 implementation was the reason why I'm seeing better SERPs, more traffic, and higher revenues. I'm simply suggesting that it's such an easy and quick thing to do that it's worth trying if there's even a chance it can help. In my case, I made no other changes on my end beyond taking the 5 minutes to add the code to my sites' htaccess files, and within a few weeks SERPs, traffic, and revenue are all up.
Even if the 301 was utterly pointless and had no causal effects at all in the improvements, it took 5 minutes. How many things do we all do as webmasters that take much longer and have dubious positive effects? This business is necessarily one that requires much conjecture and the occasional lark.
When I saw GoogleGuy (or it might have been ASA) post that a 301 was a good idea (canonical URL discussion, I believe), that was enough for me. It can't hurt your sites, and it *MIGHT* help, so why not? It's 5 friggin' minutes at most, unless you have a ton of sites.
Oh, and someone asked if the one site I didn't do the 301 on was any different. I left one out on purpose as a bit of a test. That site is just where it always was - no significant changes in SERPs, traffic, or revenues. All the other sites (9 of them) have seen noticeable improvements post-301. Take it or leave it.
After Google said it's word, then please everybody claiming that an 301 redirect for example.com to www.example.com may not be a good idea to SHUT UP.
Here is the link to Google's words again:
[google.com...]
I hope I made myself clear this time, as it seems some people are not able to read between the lines and are blind to subtle hints and need things spilt out bluntly in front of them to understand.
Sorry for my harsh words, but really really, arguing that the 301 may not be a useful idea even after a pointer to what Google says themselves is ...
Great catch on that link about 301's at Google! Enough said on this, I think.
