I changed my URL from http://www.example.com to http://example.com expecting some time where Google would update. Also I made redirects in .htaccess from www traffic to non-www traffic.
However I still see est. 2500 links in Google using the www after almost two month and most of them are now outdated links so this means that the user is ending up on the frontpage.
I am considering to request Google to remove all the http://www. links to solve the 404 problem.
But is this recommended and how do I do it?
Have you tried setting your preferred domain in your google webmaster tools account?
No it is not recommended. But you can accelerate the process by submitting a sitemap with the http links to your pages and a recent lastmod date. It will force Google to recrawl these pages and notice the 301 redirects.
Related
I have a domain example.co.uk on an Apache web server that is secured with a letsencrypt ssl certificate. Currently it redirects all http requests to https. I have also setup redirects from non-www to www, meaning all traffic ends up at https://www.example.co.uk
So I have four variations of the URL that always end up at this location:
http://example.co.uk
https://example.co.uk
http://www.example.co.uk
https://www.example.co.uk
I am trying to set up Google Search Console and Analytics. My question is which URLs do I need to add in to the two? Currently I have all four variations set up in Search Console with a sitemap attached to them all, or do I only need to do this for one? I have told the https www URL to prefer www in search results, which changes it for all four variations.
In Analytics should I only add https://www.example.co.uk as this is where all the traffic ends up, or do I need to add all variations of the URL to see all the traffic?
Short answer: no, unless you are migrating an existing site to https for the first time.
If all requests for your site eventually redirect to https://www.example.co.uk via a permanent 301 status code, then there isn't any benefit to adding all the links in Google Search Console. This feature is useful if you have duplicate content, such as an http site that you can't redirect to your https version for some reason, or if you've just migrated your site to a different domain name or URL scheme. If you're migrating an existing site to https, you can track how many http pages are still indexed while watching your https pages get indexed separately.
Otherwise, if you add all four links, you'll only see pages on the https://www.example.co.uk site get indexed. The Search Console allows you to track your site in the Google index, and if you are using 301 redirects then Google should never index the non-http versions of your site.
I have been doing blogging since 5 years back and from last year i had stopped blogging and delete the domain content. (During last year all pages are removed from indexed )
now I had purchased a new domain BlogTechie and i am planning to 301 redirect that old domain to new domain.
Is It helped to gain SEO authority in Google or I should start from scratch without worrying about old domain.
I am also adding settings in webmaster tools to inform Google for the change.
SEOs attribute a large portion of most search engines' ranking algorithms to link-based factors. It's possible there may be old links to your pages out there on the internet on other websites. You can capitalize on this if you still own the old URL and boost your new domain's ranking with redirects.
If you know some of your older content's URLs, it might make sense to have a one to one redirect to the new page. If you're using apache, you can do this with an .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RedirectMatch 301 /folder/oldpage.php http://www.newdomain.org/newpage.php
Anything remaining can redirect to the root.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/ [R=301]
Check out SEO Moz for more explanation on this: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
ok I previously had some issues setting up a wild card redirect to strip parameters from an old url format that were non-seo friendly to our root. With the help of stackoverflow we've got it corrected and working but now I am experiencing issues with index.php?
Im seeing tons of duplicate urls in the engines using this url format index.php?cPath=# and Google is stressing me because they think its duplicate index pages.
I tried setting up this redirect in our htaccess but no go. It won't strip out the parameters or redirect it just duplicates the page with a valid 200 response.
RewriteRule ^index.php/.*$ /? [R=301,NE,NC,L]
I want to redirect anything with index.php?cPath=# to our root domain. Any ideas on how i can tackle this 301 redirect using a mod_rewrite on apache?
I've also just noticed that our site has another issue with this url format:
domain.com/?cPath=#...
so now I also need to write a rewrite for domain.com/?cPath=# I don't know where this one popped up from but I can see its going to cause issues hence the valid 200 response code it gives. The engines are really going to love me for this one.
I have an SEO guy that is confusing me. He mentioned that in Google Webmaster Tools I should verify the www version of a site along with the non www (the non www is already verified). So I informed him there's no need because I use .htaccess to 301 redirect all www urls to the non-www url for canonical reasons (like Matt Cutts recommends). He tells me that I still should verify both versions.
I see verifying as me telling Google I want them to index things on a certain domain/subdomain...and the whole point of the canonical is that I DON'T want them indexing www subdomain urls! Not to mention, if every request to the www subdomain is redirected, is it even possible to verify it?
Should I try to do this or should I not verify the www?
Your SEO guy is not an 'SEO moron". You can verify both www prefix and 'non www' prefix in Google Web master tools no problem and then select which one is the preferred domain, www, or non www. You can not select a preferred domain in GWT without verifying both prefixes
Google explains this here:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231
That "SEO guy" is an "SEO moron". If your site can be pulled up with the www and without it you are technically serving up duplicate content and is exactly what Google doesn't want. You are much smarter then that "SEO guy". You're doing it the right way. Don't change a thing.
You need to verify both to prove you are the owner of both, because technically with and without www are in fact different websites. www is just a sub-domain, and can point to a different site if need be.
So you must prove to Google you manage both. Then because Google knows you manage both, and have the authority to specify what to do with both domains, you then tell Google the site is to use www (or not, whichever you want), and you keep the redirects.
Google will not index a domain that 301 redirects to another domain.
I do agree that its not nice to have both www and non-www listed in webmaster separately though. But you could in theory have loads and loads of different sites as sub-domains, so they must be treated as different sites by Google.
My website shows up for some keywords in the www and some in the non www. Seaquake shows more links to the non www version. It is a PR2 either way. I would like to combine the link juice of the two versions into the non www version. Does anyone know the best way to combine the two and keep the link juice of both. It is as simple as a 301 redirect and if so does the 301 need to be handled in any specific way.
Yep, you choose the one you want (without www.) and you
301 redirect the other to the one you choose. (Using an htaccess directive to always remove the www. part for instance).
The best way to do this is to use the rel canonical tag in your website. Check out this from the google webmaster tools:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
The preferred domain is the one that you would liked used to index your site's pages. Links may point to your site using both the www and non-www versions of the URL.
For Instance:
http://www.example.com and http://example.com
The preferred domain is the version that you want used for your site in the search results.
Visit Google Web Master Tools for information on Canonical domain and what to prefer.