There seems to be a lot of chatter on this site on the subject,but much of it "too old". My site is www.example.com but there seems to be something weird about the domain lookup.
After bashing at this problem since before the sun came up!
If I ping my site with www.example then I get a return showing it decoded to an IP address starting with 65.
If I ping my site with example etc then I get a return showing it decoded to an IP starting 205! (i.e. if I leave out the "www")
Using EasyWhois, the first (65) IP address returns the registrant as myself and my site
Using EasyWhois, the second (205) IP returns a company in USA as the registrant.
Now, I have read elsewhere that Google "doesn't care about the www" in the landing site info on your ad (useful for folks with long names who can't otherwise fit in the 35-letter limit) so I wonder if Google either "assumes", or "strips" the www, and hence gets the wrong landing site in its automatic checking?
I have a head-ache!
Stu
[edited by: eWhisper at 12:13 pm (utc) on Dec. 21, 2008]
[edit reason] Please use example.com for domain questions [/edit]
from your description you certainly have an issue with your example.co.uk at the domain name server that you also must fix.
check with your domain registrar.
once you get that figured out, make sure you have every request to your web server redirected to the canonical domain, which in your case is www.example.co.uk
"canonical"?
[edited by: eWhisper at 12:14 pm (utc) on Dec. 21, 2008]
I appreciate that you don't want folks "spamming" your forum, but the actual URL, that you edited out, could be useful for someone trying to help me!
Question is - Is there something wrong with my hosting set-up? Or is it "something Google"?
If you type in www.yourdomain.whatever into the browser, does it go to the same place as just typing yourdomain.whatever in the browser?
To re-phrase (I don't appear to be able to edit)
www.mydomain.co.uk and
http://www.example.co.uk
both return my web site's home page.
http://example.co.uk
returns an "under construction" page with "host: example.co.uk is not authorized" under it.
[edited by: eelixduppy at 6:11 pm (utc) on Dec. 21, 2008]
[edit reason] exemplified [/edit]
Forget the http; it's not relevant here.
www.example.co.uk
example.co.uk
should both return the same results.
Where did you register your domains? Do you have DNS control over them?
www.example.co.uk
example.co.ukshould both return the same results.
they should both be addressed to the same server in the dns.
one of the urls should be returning a 301 response to the other url.
I think you missed the point. Google automatically inserts Http:// before the fields that you fill in for your ad.
If I put www.example.co.uk in a field, then Google makes it
http:www.example.co.uk
Now if I put http:www.example.co.uk into my browser, my web page returns. If I click on the same thing in my ad in adwords setup, I also get my page.
Now I have read that Google doesn't care if you include the www or not, so I suspect that their "robot" that checks for the correct landing page ignores the www anyway.
This would cause it to go to http://example.co.uk (WITH http but NO www) and this could be the reason that my ad is disapproved, because http://example.co.uk returns a completely different page from a totally different URL.
We (my web company and myself) have checked, double-checked, and tried different variations and we are totally confident that there is no typo in the address field of the ad.
So why would :
http://www.example.co.uk (which I put into the ad fields) and
http://example.co.uk (which is what I suspect Google looks at)
return totally different pages?
i know exactly what your problem is because i did an address lookup for your primary and sub domains and saw the 65 & 205 ip addresses you mentioned and then did a network whois for those ips and also looked at the http response headers and status chains for http get requests of both domains.
the biggest problem as netmeg and i have both mentioned is in your domain name server.
your www.example.co.uk subdomain is going to "your web server".
your example.co.uk domain is still going to "that domain parking page", probably where it was hosted until you bought it.
you must fix this by going to your registrar.
the example.co.uk domain should be addressed to the same server as the www.example.co.uk subdomain.
then you can look at the redirect to solve your second biggest problem.
oh and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!
Thanks for confirming what I was beginning to suspect after the session yesterday morning in the small hours regarding the Name Server! As soon as I can I'll get the company who administer this to look into it and get it fixed.
You mention the "second biggest problem" being a redirect - could you please elaborate?
Any yes, I've had a look at Welcome to, and I'll go back there now to follow some of the links (TOS etc!)
Regards, Stu
You mention the "second biggest problem" being a redirect - could you please elaborate?
once you get the requests for example.co.uk addressed to the correct server (ip), make sure that server uses a 301 response to redirect the request (url) to www.example.co.uk
