Non www has 110 links the www has 5 - rankings have gone

[therealmarkhall]

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

[dmac]

It's important to stick with one or the other. We changed from www to non www and saw a drop in our SERPS that lasted about 3 weeks. Google was still showing www on our home page only, the rest were non www. We found that all of our pages linked back to www.page/index. We just fixed that a few days ago and I'm guessing google will figure it out in a week or two.

[SEMCLIX]

I agree with Andy, www - non www doesn't matter. I would go with a redirect to the non www since most of your links don't include it. I also recommend along with the 301 redirect utilizing the canonical tag and setting the preferences in Google webmaster tools.(what we do). If your using a Linux based server here is the .htaccess code to redirect to the non www (be sure to place it at the top of the .htaccess)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yoursite.co.uk$
RewriteRule (.*) http://yoursite.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

(you may already have done this since you mentioned that the site currently resolves to the non www version, but I included it for anyone who may be considering it).If it's not feasible to utilize the .htaccess still use the webmaster tools and canonical options at the very least:

As for the drop in rankings I personally noticed a few of my stores dropped in page rank recently around the same time Google released it's Panda updates. These stores were placed into a link building software that a company I used to work for created. I suspect that since a good chunk of these links were distributed onto blogs that were spam in nature, this may be the cause of the drop, but it's not for certain. So if you participated in some gray or black link building in the past with your site then this could be the reason as mentioned in this article [As for the drop in rankings I personally noticed a few of my stores dropped in page rank recently around the same time Google released it's Panda updates. These stores were placed into a link building software that a company I used to work for created. I suspect that since a good chunk of these links were distributed onto blogs that were spam in nature, this may be the cause of the drop, but it's not certain. So if you participated in some gray or black link building in the past with your site then this could be the reason as mentioned in this article http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067687/Google-Panda-Update-Say-Goodbye-to-Low-Quality-Link-Building Best of luck!">http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067687/Google-Panda-Update-Say-Goodbye-to-Low-Quality-Link-Building](I agree with Andy, www - non www doesn't matter. I would go with a redirect to the non www since most of your links don't include it. I also recommend along with the 301 redirect utilizing the canonical tag and setting the preferences in google webmaster tools.(what we do). If your using a Linux based server here is the .htaccess code to redirect to the non www (be sure to place it at the top of the .htaccess) RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yoursite.co.uk$ RewriteRule (.*) http://yoursite.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] (you may already have done this since you mentioned that the site currently resolves to the non www version, but I included it for anyone who may be considering it).If it's not feasible to utilize the .htaccess still use the webmaster tools and canonical options at the very least: <link rel= "Search Engine Watch Panda Update")

Best of luck!

[nwinternetmarketing]

For canonical URLS, all that matters is that everything is redirected to the same place.

Example:
TLD.com
www.TLD.com
TLD.com/
www.TLD.com/
TLD.com/index.html
www.TLD.com/index.html
TLD.com/index.html/
www.TLD.com/index.html/

All those need to point to the same place.  In your scenario, I would go with the TLD.com (no www).

In physics, Average Velocity = (change in position) / (elapsed time)

Link Velocity: Change in # of links indexed / time

So let's say week 1 you build and index 100 links, then the next week you build 200 links.

Your velocity would then be +100 links/week, or a rate of change of 1. (200-100 / 100 = 1 .... (week 2 - week1) / week 1 = change)

Let's say then on week 3 you build another 200 links.  Your link velocity, compared to the prior week, is ZERO. ( 200 - 200 / 200 )  This is because you're not accelerating. Zero is not a bad thing. Zero means you're treading water

Then on week 4, you only build 100 links. Compared to week 3, your link velocity would be -0.5 (100 - 200 / 200). This indicates your links aren't coming in as fast / slowing down. DUH

So what does this all mean?

Google uses link velocity to measure trends and hot topics.  Websites that with positive link velocity are considered to be trending upwards; that is, becoming more popular.

[AndyKuiper]

Jacob  is correct is his advice regarding link strategy - as well, there is some strong research on -- unnatural linking patterns --  As for the www vs. non-www, it doesn't matter much at all. As Jacob suggested, I'd redirect the non-www to www or vice-versa (via .htaccess).
You can also (try, as I think the option still isn't working) to set your www or non-www preference in Google Webmaster Tools.

Andy

[therealmarkhall]

The site resolves on the non www now?

Which is best www or not?

I'm interested to hear more about

Also, I would really question the merits of your fire and forget link building. Link velocity is an important metric (also shows you're not "gaming" the system).

[nwinternetmarketing]

Agh.. response got deleted (my fault).

Option a) force the non-www canonical URL. Moving forward, build all links to non-www TLD

Option b) rebuild / update all your links to the www format

Also, I would really question the merits of your fire and forget link building. Link velocity is an important metric (also shows you're not "gaming" the system).