Setting preferred domain as www or none www

[cbielich]

Way back before panda I used to rank for certain keywords pretty well. Of course like many others after panda I lost some of those rankings. I have been getting better since then so its not that bad. I was poking around in Google Webmaster Tools and I noticed something which I need some clarification in.

History my site freescrabbledictionary.com used to be indexed as a none www. Then some time ago I can't remember when I set it to www. Tonight I was looking through my webmaster tools and I noticed something that did not make sense to me.

In my content keywords section for the none www my list is as follows

Content Keywords

<form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET">

Keyword	Significance
1.	scrabble
2.	words (2 variants)
3.	dictionary
4.	cheat
5.	finder
6.	friends
7.	maker (2 variants)
8.	noun
9.	letter (2 variants)
10.	hasbro
11.	mattel
12.	spear
13.	found (2 variants)
14.	sowpods
15.	freescrabbledictionary
16.	builder
17.	affiliated
18.	search
19.	solver
20.	lists

</form>

Then I looked at my www lists and its

Content Keywords

<form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET">

Keyword	Significance
1.	words (3 variants)
2.	scrabble (2 variants)
3.	letter (4 variants)
4.	points
5.	cheat (3 variants)
6.	friends (2 variants)
7.	finder (2 variants)
8.	anagram (2 variants)
9.	dictionary
10.	tool (2 variants)
11.	hasbro
12.	mattel
13.	spear
14.	game (4 variants)
15.	mobile
16.	affiliated (3 variants)
17.	berkshire
18.	canada
19.	calculations (5 variants)
20.	coming (4 variants)

</form>

My none www version has the order (especially the first 5 keywords) that I want, my www version is no were near it. If I change back to the none www version could I possible see an change in rank? or can it effect it if I change it?

I am starting to think I shot myself in the foot when I switched...

[mad2k]

Hi again,

Cesar I think your problem is not different order of keywords but duplicated content. If you have two websites with the same content it can be a problem and it was probably the reason of Panda influence on your website.

let me understand, do you have: http://www.example.com and http://example.com  with the same content?

more: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=duplicated+content

http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=www+or+non+www

In my opinion you should choose better site (www or non-www) by checking a value in OSE and finally do a 301 redirection of lower ranked to higher ranked and do the same in GWT ...that  means choose higher ranked as your primary.

Marek

[Adam.Whittles]

Hi Cesar,

There is no need to be so worried. You certainly haven't shot yourself in the foot here.

I don't think you quite understand what the 'Content Keywords' section of GWT actually means. It is not a reflection of your rankings for each of these keywords. It is a representation of the most common keywords found across your pages that the Google crawler has found. The significance ranking is just an indication of how often the Google crawler has found each keyword. If your content changes over time then of course the list will also reflect this as the crawler visits your pages.

If you feel there are keywords missing then this could be because Google could not crawl all of your pages and therefore you should check the crawl errors section of your GWT. IT could also be because Google has excluded words that it determines to be boilerplate text or common words.

You can find out more information in the Webmaster Tools help center:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35255

Hope this helps,

Adam.

[mad2k]

Hello Cesar,

Firs of all what are your server and site settings? There are many tools to check it. If you have www and non-www you have duplicate content and probably thats why you lost on rankings.

For all my sites I used without www address and redirect everything *.example.com (all subdomains) to example.com (respectively http://www.example.com or http://example.com).

Why ... theory is internet behavior.

1. It's obvious that in present times more people search directly writing a words to search engine address field  rather than write in google search-box field. So if you have a good brand it is more likely that they write your branded name than your branded name with the www in front of branded name.

2. www is a subdomain of a main domain - there's no point to guide people to subdomain.

3. In server configuration *.example.com with everything in subdomain will direct traffic to example.com

4. It is simple and short, now everything going to shortage and simplicity, why not site names?

5. Like in point 1 but bit different - it's mostly young users behavior to shortage addresses so treat 5 as a reaffirmation of 1 dedicated to the future

It is my theory. Maybe someone will add something ...

Marek