Weird Google indexing issues with www being forced
-
IM working on a site which is really not indexing as it should, I have created a sitemap.xml which I thought would fix the issue but it hasn't, what seems to be happening is the Google is making www pages canonical for some of the site and without www for the rest. the site should be without www. see images attached for a visual explanation.
when adding pages in Google search console without www some pages cannot be indexed as Google thinks the www version is canonical, and I have no idea why, there is no canonical set up at all, what I would do if I could is to add canonical tags to each page to pint to the non www version, but the CMA does not allow for canonical. not quite sure how to proceed, how to tell google that the non www version is in fact correct, I dont have any idea why its assuming www is canonical either??? -
Personally it's something that I would nip in the bud, with 301 redirects. But if you are going to do that, make sure execution is flawless or you'll end up with problems
-
great thanks, I have access via ftp but the CMS is pretty locked down, do you think this would cause this site to perform so badly in SRPS though, its an old site and it really just does rank as I would expect. Will look into 301s thanks
-
You need to force one structure with 301 redirects. Canonical tags can and often are ignored, based on link and popularity metrics which Google have at their disposal. If one page has more of a legacy than its prefix variant (or more contemporary popularity) - then often Google will choose their own canonical, even if you have canonical tags deployed
Use 301 redirects to force a single structure. It can probably be achieved with one or two flexible redirect rules
Be careful of chaining. Sometimes these rules can do stuff like, do one redirect to the new protocol then ANOTHER to the new prefix. Ideally you want it airtight, all-in-one
If you are a CMS user only and your CMS is limited, stop worrying about it. There's nothing you can do
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
-
Google serp pagination issue
We are a local real estate company and have landing pages for different communities and cities around our area that display the most recent listings. For example: www.mysite.com/wa/tumwater is our landing page for the city of Tumwater homes for sale. Google has indexed most of our landing pages, but for whatever reason they are displaying either page 2, 3, 4 etc... instead of page 1. Our Roy, WA landing page is another example. www.mysite.com/wa/roy has recently been showing up on page 1 of Google for "Roy WA homes for sale", but now we are much further down and www.mysite.com/wa/roy?start=80 (page 5) is the only page in the serps. (coincidentally we no longer have 5 pages worth of listings for this city, so this link now redirects to www.mysite.com/wa/roy.) We haven't made any major recent changes to the site. Any help would be much appreciated! *You can see what my site is in the attached image... I just don't want this post to show up when someone google's the actual name of the business 🙂 nTTrSMx.jpg C4mhfgh.jpg
Technical SEO | | summithomes0 -
Google Webmaster Image Index Issue
I submitted the image sitemap in GWT and only few of them get indexed in google, but now the indexed images are also getting de-index. Any solution for it? See the attached E4hPDQE
Technical SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
My www. domain has less page authroity than my non www.
I have a webmaster working on the site and I don't really remember how it got this way but it now appears that the non www have more PA than the www. I am redirecting it so I guess it's a good thing? should I move the site so that it's the root and www is the redirect? any help is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ecb090 -
Has anyone tested or knows whether it makes a difference to upload a disavow file to both www. and non-www. versions of your site in GWMT?
Although Google treats both as separate sites, I always assumed that uploading the disavow file to the canonical version of your site would solve the problem. Is this the case, or has anyone seen better results uploading to both versions?
Technical SEO | | CustardOnlineMarketing0 -
Do I have panda issues?
Hi , I m looking for suggestions for my website i believe is suffering from the panda updates. Can someone point out what possible issues within the site that might be causing with recent panda updates? here is the link http://goo.gl/St3aP thanks nick.
Technical SEO | | orion680 -
Videos not indexed yet in google analytics
Hi I submitted a video stemap to google webmasters a month ago and it shows submitted videos in webmasters account but it is not showing that any video been indexed by google yet. I am not sure whats the issue because its taking long time or may be some error is there. Amit
Technical SEO | | expertvillagemedia0 -
Pages not Indexed after a successful Google Fetch
I am trying to understand why google isn't indexing key content on my site. www.BeyondTransition.com is indexed and new pages show up in a couple of hours. My key content is 6 pages of information for each of 3000 events (driven by mySQL on a wordpress platform). These pages are reached via a search page, but no direct navigation from the home page. When I link to an event page from an indexed page it doesn't show up in search results. When I use fetch on webmaster tools the fetch is successful but is then not indexed - or if it does appear in results it's directed to the internal search page e.g. http://www.beyondtransition.com/site/races/course/race110003/ has been fetched and submitted with links but when I search for BeyondTransition Ironman Cozumel I get these results.... So what have I done wrong and how do I go about fixing it? All thoughts and advice appreciated Thanks Denis
Technical SEO | | beyondtransition0 -
Google Penalize?
Hello, I read an statement somewhere which stated: "2 identical URLs linked to 2 different popular key phrases next to each other (on the same website/domain) will lead to a Google penalize. Google knows, that both terms are popular. This means, Google will ignore the links to your site (you'll not have any benefit) and the site you have your links on loses authority." What are your thoughts on this statement? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | micfo0