Campaign Domain "change" (www. vs no www.)

[JeanlouisSEO]

Hello,

I'm tracking a domain (with www.thespin.be) since months. Last week we changed things related to domain & server and now SEOmoz has 0 pages crawled.

I think that's because now my main domain is without www. (thespin.be).

How can I modify my campaign to reflect this "change" (that's not really a new domain..) to avoid losing all my campaign history ?

Also, on Google Webmaster Tools it's like I have 2 different sites (one with www. and another without), although I've defined my favorite domain (without www.) months ago.. Google won't update its index. And I have this problem on several other sites..

Thank you very much for giving me a feedback.

Regards

Jean-Louis

[MeganSingley]

Hi Jean-Louis! This is Megan from SEOmoz. You're right that the number of pages getting crawled has dropped to 1 because of the change from www to non www. Unfortunately, you'll need to start a new campaign for thespin.be. The tool doesn't allow the domain of a campaign changed once it's setup. It's limited in that way, because if the parameters of a campaign were constantly changing, it could make it extremely difficult to interpret historical data in terms of why progress was or wasn't made.

On the bright side, you can archive your current campaign so that you'll have all of the historical data for reference. Also, archiving doesn't take up a campaign slot.

I hope this helps!

[akhlis]

Here is the code you need to use:

• Locate your .httpaccess file inside the root folder (you may need a file explorer)
• Open it inside Notepade/Wordpad, i recommend NotePad++
• Add this code:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+) [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*) http://%1/$1 [R=301,NE,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+) [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%1/$1 [R=301,NE,L]

This will affect http://www. and https://www.

This httpaccess if safe to use with SSL on or off.

Note that I used NE flag to prevent apache from escaping the query string. Without this flag, apache will change the requested  /?foo%20bar to /?foo%2250bar

[JeanlouisSEO]

Hi Labici,

First, thank you for your fast reply.

Well I have 2 zone DNS type A redirecting to my server: 1 with www. and the other without. Is it okay or should I use another type of redirect ?

[akhlis]

First be sure you redirect all the www. traffic to non www. domain or you will get duplicated content and titles.

You have made a good move to get rid of www. as google tends to rank non www. domains higher.

"domain & server and now SEOmoz has 0 pages crawled."

I think you need to wait to be re-indexed, not 100% sure, but I think you will get the answer Friday when the reports are being sent out by SEOMoz.