Is the www and non www isue realy seen by Google as duplicate content?
-
I realy don't understand how Google could posibly devaluate a link because the site displays the same content with www and without www. I mean did somebody recently saw a devaluation of a domain because of this isue? I somehow can not belive this because it is the standard when geting a new webspace that the new website display the same content with and without www.
Is a redirect realy necessary?
-
Google maay be able to work out what version you want to go with, but is it the same one that bing and other SE's will go with, and then you have the problem with www and non www links, one will be redirect to the other somehow and will leak a bit of link juice. its better that when some one copies your url its always the same.
I prefer the non www. because www is unessasry, i believe its an old unix thing, not needed today. If you have a long domain name www makes it just that much more confusing
-
Google is very good at figuring out that www and non www versions are the same site - so content duplication will not be an issue (this happens too often for them not to handle properly). One advantage you do have is consolidation of yoru link juice towards the same canonical version and therefore achieving better results. Set your preference in Google Webmaster Tools to a choice and stick to it - everywhere - even in your email signatures and printed material.
As far as www goes we've purposely dropped it and went with non-www, I personally think www is silly and meaningless however this means we have to from time to time police and correct how webmasters write down and link our URL and ask for www removal if found. Not too hard if you monitor yoru brand via Google Alerts.
-
Better have www. instead of without. Uniformity has always been an issue
-
Hi Michael,
Now a days Google is really Google at figuring out what version of the website you want to go with but with that said, isn't really that hard of a thing to fix. I'd say that as long as all your internal links are consistent in pointing to the same version, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. In the long run of things, by making the redirect you won't see this huge bump in rankings but it is a standard practice that is done.
Casey
-
better safe then sorry.
I did look around for some time to get the answer to the same question and since no one could get a straight answer and even google webmaster tool has the option for ww or non www I think is better to get the 301 redirect.
Anyway - is just an opinion.
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
-
Duplicated Content on Wordpress Mobile&Desktop versions- Is it bad for SEO?
Hello, I use a Wordpress theme for displaying mobile and desktop versions separately. The problem is that if you use tools like screaming frog or if you look at the code (view source), you can detect duplicated content. But if you're browsing on your mobile you will see only the content I have created for the mobile version and the same if you're looking at the desktop version, you will only see the desktop content.
On-Page Optimization | | AlphaRoadside
Is this creating an SEO problem? If it is, please let me know why and if it has a solution. Thanks in advance.0 -
What constitutes duplicate content on a page?
I am working on SEO for a Shopify store. Their products are very similar, hence the pages are so similar that Moz shows them as duplicate content. The only difference in the product pages is the title and model number. I am going to "go for the gold" and try re-writing all the product descriptions. It's incredibly difficult due to the products being nearly identical with just a minor variation. I know I could go down the road of just creating variants --- but the customer is not down for that. Here's my question: what constitutes duplicate content? 80% of the content, 90%???? If I can going to re-write the descriptions, what should I aim for? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | steve_linn1 -
Page Speed Insights for www and non www sites
I'm testing a client site for speed and I'm getting different results when I test www and non www. What's causing this from the same site? Non www scored 37/100 for mobile, very concerning www scored 54/100 for mobile, still problems but not as severe Can anyone shed any light on this please?
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing_Optimist0 -
Duplicate content - "Same" profile-information
Hi, I own a casting website with lots of profiles. Some of these profiles only typed in their firstname, email and age, when they registered on the site, and they haven't added more information ever since. From Crawl Diagnostics, I can see that there is "lots" of these profiles, which looks exactly the same (only showing age and firstname), allthought they are not the same. I could add which day the profile were created on the site, to maybe avoid these "duplications". The email will always be hidden. Or, how big an issue is this? Crawl Diagnostics tells me, that there is around 200 of these, and they are "marked" as High Priority. Any ideas on what to do? /Kasper
On-Page Optimization | | KasperGJ0 -
Duplicate Content Re: Product listing body copy on Website, Amazon & Ebay - issues ?
Hi Is it ok to have identical product body copy on market/platform listings same as the websites product listings ? In this case the products are the websites/own brand products (all pages canonicalised), so i take it shouldn't cause any issues or are you supposed to differentiate the product body copy on marketplace listings ? Im asking re seo reasons All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
What does Google consider a "Duplicate Title Tag?"
Do the title tags have to be exactly the same, or can they have some of the same keywords but different context? Hypothetical example: Home Page = Raising a Kitten, Tips & Tricks for a Healthy Cat Sub-Page = How to Cat-Proof your Home when Raising a Kitten Since both title tags has "raising a kitten," "cat" and "tips" would this be considered a "Duplicate Title Tag" even though the pages have completely different content in them? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Scratch_MM0 -
I have seen zero movement in my Google keyword rankings.
I have seen zero movement in my Google keyword rankings, but I have seen movement on the other search engines. I must be doing something wrong. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | LindaWolfe0 -
Duplicate Content Issues with Forum
Hi Everyone, I just signed up last night and received the crawl stats for my site (ShapeFit.com). Since April of 2011, my site has been severely impacted by Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm updates and we have lost about 80% of our traffic during that time. I have been trying to follow the guidelines provided by Google to fix the issues and help recover but nothing seems to be working. The majority of my time has been invested in trying to add content to "thin" pages on the site and filing DMCA notices for copyright infringement issues. Since this work has not produced any noticeable recovery, I decided to focus my attention on removing bad backlinks and this is how I found SEOmoz. My question is about duplicate content. The crawl diagnostics showed 6,000 errors for duplicate page content and the same for duplicate page title. After reviewing the details, it looks like almost every page is from the forum (shapefit.com/forum). What's the best way to resolve these issues? Should I completely block the "forum" folder from being indexed by Google or is there something I can do within the forum software to fix this (I use phpBB)? I really appreciate any feedback that would help fix these issues so the site can hopefully start recovering from Panda/Penguin. Thank you, Kris
On-Page Optimization | | shapefit0