Canonical issue? Moz showing www and non- in DA

[KringleClaus]

Looking at Moz DA analysis and noticed it's showing both the www and non-www versions of the same page (sorry, late at night - forget tech term). I'm fairly certain I have redirects set up properly (e.g. typing in http://example.com redirects to canonical url of https://www.example.com). All webpages also have canonical tag.

Just concerned as different versions of the same webpage are showing different PAs.

Am I missing something?

Is there some action I should be taking?

Thx
Santa

[edited by: engine at 9:21 am (utc) on Nov 19, 2020]
[edit reason] Please use example.com [/edit]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], KringleClaus!

Am I missing something?

wondering if https://example.com also redirects to https://www.example.com

[Robert Charlton]

KringleClaus, also, what is your syntax in the redirects?

[phranque]

what is your syntax in the redirects?

for one, are they 301 redirects?

[KringleClaus]

I 2x-checked & can confirm that all the following resolve to https://www.example.com:
• http://example.com
• http://www.example.com
• https://example.com

I'm running on Azure. Relevant portion of web.config is:

<rule name="Redirect any HTTP to HTTPS-with-www" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(.*)" />
<conditions>
<add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="^OFF$" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="https://www.example.com/{R:1}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" />
</rule>


<rule name="RedirectNonWwwToWww" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(.*)" />
<conditions>
<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^example.com$" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="https://www.example.com/{R:0}" redirectType="Permanent" />
</rule>


A big thanks to the mod for moving this thread to the correct forum btw. I did a newbie and posted it elsewhere. Realized my mistake immediately after sending. D'oh! Sorry!

-Santa

[not2easy]

The Moz 'DA' reading is a proprietary thing that is measured using Moz tools. Within their tools it can tell you something but it doesn't translate to anything that relates directly to ranking or indexing of a site or its pages.

Others can help with the configuration for Azure, that is a WIN server I believe. I'm more familiar with Apache rules so not offering input on that part. Generally, if you paste in a version of your page URLs that is not https or is not using 'www' it should redirect to the correct version and your server logs should show a 301 response - but again, that is on Apache. I'm not sure what your logs would/should show on Azure.

[lucy24]

I don't speak Azure either (does anyone hereabouts?) but this directive

<action type="Redirect" url="https://www.example.com/{R:0}" redirectType="Permanent" />

certainly looks as if it should yield a 301 rather than a 302.

Any chance Moz is simply babbling? This is an all too common explanation when people find weird things reported in GWT/GSC.

[KringleClaus]

Thank you for the reply (and honesty/humility)! The issue is more that Moz is showing non-canonicalized URLs in its results along with the canonical URLs (with PAs differing between some of the canonical & non-canonical URLs). I'm concerned this is indicative of a "link juice splitting" problem about which I'm unaware.

For background, I was ranking #1 (ahead of Google and NORAD) for a competitive keyphrase, albeit briefly, two years ago. Since then, the 20+ year old site has been dropping like a rock in general with a few top keyphrases having fallen even moreso. No Black hat, Panda penalties etc. (I'm strictly White Hat :-)

I was Top 3 for another extremely competitive keyword for years/decades and dropped out of Top 100 recently. The weird part is that every once in a while it will show up in the Top 10-15 briefly before dropping out of the Top 100 again. Has anyone else seen this?

I've been going on the theory that I'm somehow doing things wrong in two different ways:
• Something is wrong big-time site-wide (hence the concern over site-wide canonicalization)
• Something is even worse on a page-specific level (i.e. G's algorithm has moved against some specific pages & I haven't figured out how it has changed/how to respond)
</rant>

I just checked and NORAD has 1/7 non-canonicalized URL in its "Top Pages by Links" (https://moz.com/domain-analysis?site=noradsanta.org) whereas I have 3/7.

Hmm, perhaps Moz is telling me that I have a "link updating"/building opportunity here?

- Santa

[KringleClaus]

Thank you Lucy.

After reading not2easy's post, I had the same thought. Is "redirectType="Permanent"" equivalent to 301? I couldn't find anything on Google to tell me either way :-(

Merry Christmas!
- Santa

[lucy24]

Is "redirectType="Permanent"" equivalent to 301?

Saying “equivalent to” may be a bit misleading; the question is whether this server directive results in the server sending out a 301 status code. Numerical codes are always the same, no matter how they are generated. I think 302 (temporary redirect) is the default for all servers, and then if you specify “Permanent” it ought to mean 301.

But you should be able to check this easily. If your server logs don't show response codes--this is where we need someone who speaks at least a few words of Azure--another way to check is by using a utility such as Live Headers in your browser. I think most browsers have something of the kind, by one name or another. Request a couple of random pages with the wrong hostname (with/without www) and confirm that you get a 301 response.

[phranque]

Is "redirectType="Permanent"" equivalent to 301?

one would presume:
(see: 301 Moved Permanently)
https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.3.2

Merry Christmas!

the 5 weeks of christmas?

[KringleClaus]

Thank you Lucy for the suggestion & for jogging my ever fading memory :-) When I used Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer ( [rexswain.com...] ) for the 3 variants, the following was returned each time:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

So the answer to my question of whether the Win/IIS web.config statement "redirectType="Permanent" is equivalent to "301 Moved Permanently" is... Yes!

I suspect I've been thinking about the Moz results the way. They're not results for webpages Moz is seeing coming from me. Perhaps they're results based upon links from 3rd-party webpages that reference the non-canonicals. In other words, (and to my earlier point) there may be a huge opportunity here if Moz is telling me there are a large number of websites not linking to my canonicals. Time for me to research & send out some emails to webmasters politely asking them to update their outdated links! (Link building 101 ;-). I'll report my findings back here as to whether this may be a new way to use the Moz DA report.

Merry Christmas!
(Hey phranque, I think this crazy year, more than others, we could all use a little early Christmas cheer. Just 34 more sleeps to the big night! ;-)

[phranque]

there may be a huge opportunity here

satisfying Moz's DA meter may boost your ego but DA is irrelevant to indexing or ranking.

i would challenge you to cite a single patent or research paper published by google that addresses the concept of domain authority before you chase that "opportunity".

if Moz is telling me there are a large number of websites not linking to my canonicals

if you have proper 301 redirects in place you should be good to go.

[KringleClaus]

Phranque, I think you misunderstand what I am trying saying. Nothing to do with DA; just something I noticed while using Moz's DA. Specifically: half the results in the "Top Pages by Links" in Moz's DA meter were of non-canonicalized pages. That is where the opportunity may lie: reaching out to those who have linked to a non-canonical page on my site.

[KringleClaus]

"...what I am trying saying..." LOL! "...what I am trying to say..."
Maybe I speaka da English much? D'oh!

[phranque]

half the results in the "Top Pages by Links" in Moz's DA meter were of non-canonicalized pages. That is where the opportunity may lie: reaching out to those who have linked to a non-canonical page on my site.

i would make sure all the "Top Pages by Links" are properly redirected to the canonical url and then put your outreach efforts into new links.

[brotherhood of LAN]

As others have said, PA is a proprietary number that doesn't mean anything about how well a page ranks, how notorious it is or anything else.

I have a domain database of 600 million domains and have the moz stats for all of them from within the last 6 months and have collected them over 24 months. I could grab the same for the www version of them but it would not mean a thing. If there's a massive discrepancy between the two then that just describes an issue with quantifying what the moz stats actually mean. I think in summary the moz stats are mostly used to peddle links to other people, and those other people if they were doing due diligence would look at the actual backlinks of a page before making any informed decision. That aside, is there really much meaning to the number- not really.

What is the question, if it's about gaming the DA algo there's probably loads of opportunities, if it's about gauging the quality of a page to get a link from it, probably way more subjective. And FWIW I've used a ton of ahrefs and Majestic data, you can pick loads of examples where the "metrics" are high, but the page and its backlinks are crap. All these metrics should have someone who can quantify the "value" as an end user, as an SEO and end user.

[Robert Charlton]

KringleClaus, this is not my area of expertise, but certain explanations do seem obvious to me. If I'm way off, we're in good company and I know that someone will step in to correct me.

I'm thinking that if these are really 301s, then Moz should only see one canonical url for each of your pages, and this issue should not exist. But apparently Moz is seeing several uncanoncalized urls (or has seen several over the time window that Brotherhood of LAN mentions).

This to me would strongly suggest a Microsoft Azure problem or Azure setup problem... not a Moz problem. Microsoft, in my limited experience, has very often had problems with standards and canonical issues on its products and servers. Often the errors are built in, both in the software and in the documentation.

What comes to mind... and I know this is speculation only (and some pretty byzantine speculation at that)... is that Azure might have generated a combination of "external redirects" and "internal rewrites" over the course of the time window that Moz sees.

Take a look at this classic WebmasterWorld thread and see if anything rings a bell....

What's the difference between an external redirect and an internal rewrite?
Redirecting versus rewriting
December, 2007
https://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3524863.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Pay particular attention to jdMorgan's basic explanation, of course, and also to questions and comments by Marcia and phranque. I'm going to quote below a section of a post on this thread by phranque, which I'm not sure it's fair to do now since he wrote it 12+ years ago and was expressing his confusion then... but he's also here now, on this current thread we're posting on, so he can clarify if need be....

phranque wrote, on Jan 16, 2008...

...having said that, one "click" on a link can generate a chain of external redirects, temporary and/or permanent, and each of those external redirects could have been generated after a series of internal rewrites. so i'm quite in agreement on the clarity of mud - it makes my head hurt sometimes...

This might also explain how you're seeing some server header checks confirm the 301, depending on how long your setup has been in place.

[edited by: not2easy at 7:53 pm (utc) on Nov 21, 2020]
[edit reason] edit typo per author request [/edit]

[KringleClaus]

Thx all for the comments and insights.