Www vs. non-www differences in crawl errors in Webmaster tools...
-
Hey All,
I have been working on an eCommerce site for a while that to no avail, continues to make me want to hang myself. To make things worth the developers just do not understand SEO and it seems every change they make just messes up work we've already done. Job security I guess.
Anywho,most recently we realized they had some major sitemap issues as almost 3000 pages were submitted by only 20 or so were indexed. Well, they updated the sitemap and although all the pages are properly indexing, I now have 5000+ "not found" crawl errors in the non-www version of WMT and almost none in the www version of the WMT account.
Anyone have insight as to why this would be?
-
In my experience, 301 redirects work better than canonical tags for redirecting non-www to www. Even with the redirects in place, though, you should still use canonicals because it helps prevent duplicate content in cases of query parameters getting indexed.
Here is the htaccess code if you need it:
#Options +FollowSymlinks
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]This will automatically redirect all non-www URLs to www.
-
Not entirely sure if it is set up that way in HTaccess. I do have it set up that way in WMT though (preferred domain.)
Also isn't this what rel=canonical is for? If all my www pages redirected to my non www pages through HT access then what would I use that tag for?
-
Is the non-www version redirecting to www? If not, you should configure your htaccess file so that it redirects. Then you can see if the not found errors persist.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Interest in optimise Google Crawl
Hello, I have an ecommerce site with all pages crawled and indexed by Google. But I have some pages with multiple urls like : www.sitename.com/product-name.html and www.sitename.com/category/product-name.html There is a canonical on all these pages linking to the simplest url (so Google index only one page). So the multiple pages are not indexed, but Google still comes crawling them. My question is : Did I have any interest in avoiding Google to crawl these pages or not ? My point is that Google crawl around 1500 pages a day on my site, but there are only 800 real pages and they are all indexed on Google. There is no particular issue, so is it interesting to make it change ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onibi290 -
Google webmaster reports non-existent links between syndicated sites
We have run into an issue with linking that we are completely puzzled by. We syndicate our content to various clients, taking care to ensure that we have followed all the best practices that Google recommends for syndicating content. But recently, we noticed Google Webmaster report links from ClientA to ClientB, and we cannot figure out why it thinks that way. We have never created, and we have never found the links that Google Webmaster claims are there. It is important for us to keep our clients isolated. Has anyone seen such behavior? Any ideas/pointers/hunches would be very much appreciated. Happy to provide more information. We even asked on the Google Webmaster Forum (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/QkGF7-HZHTY;context-place=forum/webmasters), but thought this might be a better place to get expert advice. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | prakash.sikchi0 -
Tool to bulk check outbound links
Hi. I have a list of 50 domains I need to check for links to three different sites. Does anybody know an easy way to do this? The best solution I have found so far is to crawl each with Screaming Frog and search for the domains, but I can only do one at a time this way. Some way to speed it up would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
TLDs vs ccTLDs?
*Was trying to get this question answered in another thread but someone marked it as "answered" and no more responses came. So the question is about best practices on TLDs vs ccTLDs. I have a .com TLD that has DA 39 which redirects to the localized ccTLDs .co.id and .com.sg that have DA 17. All link building has been done for the .com TLD. In terms of content, it sometimes overlaps as the same content shows up on both the ccTLDs. What is best practices here? It doesnt look like my ccTLDs are getting any juice from the TLD. Should I just take my ccTLDs and combine them into my TLD in subdomains? Will I see any benefits? Thanks V j3LWnOJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | venkatraman0 -
Significant Google crawl errors
We've got a site that continuously like clockwork encounters server errors with when Google crawls it. Since the end of last year it will go a week fine, then it will have two straight weeks of 70%-100% error rate when Google tries to crawl it. During this time you can still put the URL in and go to the site, but spider simulators return a 404 error. Just this morning we had another error message, I did a fetch and resubmit, and magically now it's back. We changed servers on it in Jan to Go Daddy because the previous server (Tronics) kept getting hacked. IIt's built in html so I'm wondering if it's something in the code maybe? http://www.campteam.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregWalt1 -
50,000 backlinks in webmaster tools from one site???
Hi All, I'm new to evaluating backlinks, but I just saw I got over 50,000 links from a backlink that was added on ONE page at this site here: http://www.netnewspublisherDOTcom. I presume this is not a good thing, and if I contact them to remove the one link on the one page, it won't solve the other 49,999 links that Google is seeing pointing to us, so what do I do??. Should I contact them and ask to remove it and see if they don't and then disavow? Or would you just tell Google to disavow the whole site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlm120 -
Wordtracker vs Google Keyword Tool
When I find keyword opportunities in Wordtracker, I'll sometimes run them through Adwords Keyword tool only to find that Google says these keywords have 0 search volume. Would you use these keywords even though Google says users aren't searching for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Non www has 110 links the www has 5 - rankings have gone
A site I'm working on resolves on the non www address and has 100+ links pointing at this address, last month it started to rank and had various phases within the top 50, this month it's totally gone from the search results. The www has 5 links. My questions Which is best? Www or non How do you fix it? Any reason why the rankings have disappeared!? It's a word press site domainname.co.uk = 100+ links www.domainname.co.uk = 5 links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | therealmarkhall0