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I am the webmaster for a popular local online newspaper. Our official name has always had dash in it, something like "Xyz-News".
For several years we used only one domain: "Xyz-News.com" and all was fine concerning Google.
Then we discovered that a great many people could not find our website because they would type in "www.XyzNews.com" (note the missing dash) and, of course, get a "page not found" error.
OK, so we obtained "XyzNews.com" and had it point to "Xyz-News.com".
Then people began linking to the site using either "XyzNews.com" or "Xyz-News.com". Up until now, when I went to Google and did a "link:www.xyznews.com" it gave the same number of links as when I did "link:www.xyz-news.com".
Not any more. Google is treating a link to the domain without the dash as being to a different domain than the domain with the dash. As a result,
link:www.xyz-news.com gives 899 links
link:www.xyznews.com gives 1078 links
When before either would have listed the full 1977 links.
This seems to have caused a negative change in our search results, although our PR remains at 6.
Any ideas on how to fix this?
Thank you in Advance
How about a 301 redirect from the unhyphenated to the other? That's the safest way I can think of. Google's really, really good with those. It'll be treated as one, and bring up what the second site is redirected to.
Other search engines take a while, but it's not a problem. I assume your directory listings and all printed materials are with the hyphen, so that would best be the one to stay with.
It's actually a good strategy in hindsight with the brand potential as well as a possible separation of content in the future without starting from scratch.
This seems to have caused a negative change in our search results, although our PR remains at 6.
Not really a negative - yes results would be affected since the physical site lost a previous 800+ links... but any chance of separating your content and cross-linking or adding new content and hosting?
