Www vs non www - Crawl Error 902
-
I have just taken over admin of my company website and I have been confronted with crawl error 902 on the existing campaign that has been running for years in Moz. This seems like an intermittent problem. I have searched and tried to go over many of the other solutions and non of them seem to help.
The campaign is currently set-up with the url http://companywebsite.co.uk when I tried to do a Moz manual crawl using this URL I got an error message. I changed the link to crawl to http://www.companywebsite.co.uk and the crawl went off without a hitch and im currently waiting on the results. From testing I now know that if i go to the non-www version of my companies website then nothing happens it never loads. But if I go to the www version then it loads right away.
I know for SEO you only want 1 of these URLS so you dont have duplicate content. But i thought the non-www should redirect to the www version. Not just be completely missing.
I tried to set-up a new campaign with the defaults URL being the www version but Moz automatically changed it to the non-www version. It seems a cannot set up a new campaign with it automatically crawling the www version.
Does it sound like im out the right path to finding this cause? Or can somebody else offer up a solution?
Many thanks,
Ben.
-
Glad to hear thats all fixed! Though i will say thats a very slow response time for any development / hosting company typically i would expect a maximum response time of 8 hours.. We try to keep it under 2 heh.
But yes, glad thats working for you now
-
The problem was as you anticipated, after spending a few days chasing the party who actually look after it im pleased to say i checked this morning and all is working as expected.
Thanks very much for your help Toby!
-
Thanks Toby, Ive emailed off, I expect a reply to be a couple of days away (what it normally take them) Thanks for the help thus far and ill message back when they do!
-
In that case that would probably be the best place to start. If you want any evidence for a missing A record, heres a DNS checking tool (it currently throws an error because it can't find an A record).
Let me know what they say
-
I dont have access to the DNS, my access is limited to the Magento CMS, and ftp access to the root folder.
I guess its a case of popping an email off to the guys who built the site and control the web space and getting them to address the issue?
-
Ok, so the file is working, thats a good start!
Looks like we need to go back a step in the request process then. Do you have access to the DNS settings for the http://atp-instrumentation.co.uk domain? If so, please could you check if there is an A record set for it? (looks to be registered through Civica UK Ltd - Whois Report)
What i suspect might be the case is that you're missing an A record for atp-instrumentation.co.uk but that there is one set for the www.atp-instrumentation.co.uk.
I've run a couple of tests against the domain DNS and i get nothing back for the non-www address, which is what suggests that we're not even making it as far as your servers.
To set the A record, you'll be looking for something in your control panel for 'DNS settings' or maybe 'Host Records', you should see in there ether an option to select A record settings, or perhaps a dropdown with things like A, AAA, CNAME etc. You need to:
- select 'A'
- In the domain box type: atp-instrumentation.co.uk
- In the IP box, type: 82.118.110.42
Hopefully that makes sense. If your at all unsure, let me know and i'll do what i can to help more specifically. Domain control panels are so different for each provider its difficult to provide direct instructions without knowing what your panel looks like
-
I added the line and it did indeed break the website, got internal service error etc
So it seems the file is working
-
Just a note here, the Redirects do seem to be working, so it looks like the .htaccess file IS being loaded.
Please check anyway, its possible that the redirects are comming from another location if they have been set elseware as well. From a (very quick) look, the file seems to be formatted correctly so no obvious reason for the www redirects to not be working...
-
Hmm ok,
before i do anything else, we need to make sure that the .htaccess file is actually being loaded. To do that, we need to break it for a second.
at the top of the htaccess file, put something like (specifics dont matter here)
THISisInValid666
What we're trying to do is put some invalid text into the htaccess file so that the site breaks when it loads. The idea being that we can confirm that the .htaccess file is actually being used. So if you put that in and the site throws a 500 error (when navigating to it with or without www) we can confirm that changes we make should work.
If the site continues to load without issue then we know that the .htaccess file isnt in use so we need to look at server configureation directly (specifically the AllowOverrides settings)
Once you have confirmed if it does / doesnt break, remove the line again
-
Thanks Toby, here is the entire HTACCESS file with your fix implemented. Doesn't seem to have worked if i go to
http://atp-instrumentation.co.uk with no www it still fails to load
Edited out to shorten convo
-
You're correct, you can make it a little more generic though, without seeing all of your .htaccess file, try this:
Replace:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^companyname.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.companyname.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]With:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http%{ENV:protossl}://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]This is what could be called a wildcard redirect in that a direct copy paste should work for you with no need to edit. (you dont have to manually add in the correct domain name)
What it does:
- First it checks to see if the requested url has a www in it
- if it does -not- it then runs the rule, otherwise it ignores it.
- The rule first checks for http or https. Then adds in the www. followed by the domain and tld, finally adding the URI (/somepage/page for example).
- the L in square brakets means do not process anything else in the htaccess file
- the R=301 means that it will be a 301 (perminant) redirect.
If that still doesnt work for you, paste up your full .htaccess file, or you can send it to me directly if you'd rather and i'll take another look
-
Thanks Highland,
How do I go about changing this? I believe its to do with the .htacess file.
The website was developed in Magento via an external company who monitor it. Looking in the root folder I can see the htaccess file but it contains a lot lines of code and rewrites that I dont fully understand.
These lines are the one I think could be relevant so far.
############################################
enable rewrites
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^companyname.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.companyname.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]Then there is lots of category pages etc that are 301 redirected
Follow by
RewriteRule ^home http://www.companyname.co.uk/ [R=301,L]Then some more redirects for pages
I know this is specific but is this editable a different way in Magento? Thanks for any help offered i know this is getting more technical
-
You're 100% right. You should have one 301 redirect to the other. While there are some SEO reasons for this (mainly with duplicate content), the best reason is that it's just less confusing to end users to only have one URL to use. If your non-www has trouble loading I would say you need a 301 to the www version.
Moz restricts Top Level Domain (i.e. domain.com) and crawls accordingly. I have some set up with www.domain.com and some with just domain.com. The 301 to the www forces the issue but Moz is smart enough to crawl the proper pages.
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
-
Redirect Error
Hello, I was sent a report from a colleague containing redirect errors: The link to "http://www.xxxx.com/old-page/" has resulted in HTTP redirection to "http://www.xxxx.com/new-page".Search engines can only pass page rankings and other relevant data through a single redirection hop. Using unnecessary redirects can have a negative impact on page ranking. Our site is host on Microsoft Servers (IIS). I'm not sure what is causing these errors. Would it be the way the redirect was implemented.
Technical SEO | | 3mobileIreland0 -
Root directory vs. subdirectories
Hello. How much more important does Google consider pages in the root directory relative to pages in a subdirectory? Is it best to keep the most important pages of a site in the root directory? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
302 error removing site from results
I have a client who had a screwy url structure based off of parameters and all. They hired a developer that added the keyword to the end of the url and set up 302 redirects to the new keyword included url. Since then the entire site has virtually gone missing in the results but it is not penalized. I put in a request with webmaster tools for reconsideration and they said there was no penalty. I only just found the 302 problem today and think this is probably the problem. Could this remove a site from the search results?
Technical SEO | | webfeatseo0 -
Setting preferred domain as www or none www
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...
Technical SEO | | cbielich0 -
Pdf page titles and descriptions errors
In my weekly crawl report I suddenly have a huge number of title not found and missing page descriptions errors for all of my pdf files. The pdfs do have a page title (defined in the file/properties tab) However these page titles are not being picked up by the crawler or google. Any ideas how do I fix this? ( I am using the Adrobat 9 Distiller)
Technical SEO | | PerriCline0 -
CamelCase vs lowernodash
I'm in the process of reviewing on-site URL structure on a few sites, and I've run into something I can't decide between. I am forced to choose between the two examples: MediaRoom/CaseStudies.aspx (camel case) mediaroom/casestudies (all lower case, mashed, no dashes) I would personally rather see: media-room/case-studies/ However implementing the dashes would require manually re-writing about ~10,000 URLs. Implementing 301s from the existing structure to whatever I choose would be trivial, so there is no concern there. Given the choice between CamelCase and lower-mashed, which would you choose? Why?
Technical SEO | | MRCSearch0 -
Www.lavenderblue-flowers.co.uk
Why does this website not appear ranked on google what so ever? bit clueless, thanks for any responses! Ewan
Technical SEO | | ewanstevenson0 -
For SERPS which is better www or non www
Does it matter if i use to www or no www for SERPS on google? Obviously the redirection would be set up for either in the htaccess file.
Technical SEO | | apwade0