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
-
Did anyone else noticed Google index bug?
Noticed page indexation drop in Search Console for most of my sites. Guys from Search Engine Land seem to know about that: http://selnd.com/1YqiOoQ Did anyone else noticed something weird?
Technical SEO | | solvid1 -
Duplicate Content Showing up on Moz Crawl | www. vs. no-www.
Hello Moz Community! I am new to SEO, Moz and this is my first question. My questions; I have a client that is getting flagged for Duplicate Content. He is getting flagged for having two domains that have the same content i.e. www.mysite.com & mysite.com. I read into this and set up a 301 redirect through my hosting site. I evaluated which site had a stronger Page Authority and had the weaker site redirect to the stronger site. However, I am still getting hit for Duplicate pages caused by the www.mysite.com & mysite.com being duplicates. How should I go about resolving this? Is this an example of a Canonical tag needed in the head of the HTML? Any direction is appreciated. Thank You. B/R Will H.
Technical SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
I am having an issue with my rankings
I am having an issue with my rankings. I am not sure if there are issues with onpage dup content or with the way wordpress is behaving but there is no reason based upon the sites back link profile that the site shouldn't be ranking well. The site is mesocare.org. If anyone can help it would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | weitzluxenberg0 -
Pagination Issue
Hello Community, We have a pagination issue on a set of pages : http://homengo.com/s/location/ http://homengo.com/s/location/?page=1 and so on ( ?page=2, ?page=3, ...). As you can see in the source code the pagination rel and prev are there. First question : does moz crawler know and recognize pagination ? Second question : if yes then do you know what could be wrong with pagination on these pages ? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seomengo0 -
Why are URLs like www.site.com/#something being indexed?
So, everything after a hash (#) is not supposed to be crawled and indexed. Has that changed? I see a clients site with all sorts of URLs indexed like ... http://www.website.com/#!category/c11f For the above URL, I thought it was the same as simply http://www.website.com/. But they aren't, they're getting indexed and all the content on the pages with these hash tags are getting crawled as well. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | wiredseo0 -
Google is indexing proxy (mirror) site.
We moved the site to a new hosting. Previously the site used Godaddy Windows Hosting with white domain masking. After moving the site we just mirrored the site. We have to use mirrored domain for PPC campaigns because it mirrored site contains true BRAND name and there is better conversion with that domain plus all trade marked keywords are approved for mirrored domain. Robots.txt User-agent: * Host: www.hermitagejewelers.com Disallow: /Bin Disallow: /css www.hermitagejewelers.com is the main domain. Mirror site is www.ermitagejewelers.com (Without the "H" at the beginning) Most of the keywords are now picked up by mirror site. I have not noticed any major changes in ranking except that it ranks for mirror site. We updated the sitemap. Website is designed very poorly (not by us). Also, we submitted the change address request for ermitagejewelers to hermitagejewelers in webmasters. Please let me know any advice to fix that problem. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | MaxRuso1 -
Google News not indexing .index.html pages
Hi all, we've been asked by a blog to help them better indexing and ranking on Google News (with the site being already included in Google News with poor results) The blog had a chronicle URL duplication problem with each post existing with 3 different URLs: #1) www.domain.com/post.html (currently in noindex for editorial choices as showing all the comments) #2) www.domain.com/post/index.html (currently indexed showing only top comments) #3) www.domain.com/post/ (very same as #2) We've chosen URL #2 (/index.html) as canonical URL, and included a rel=canonical tag on URL #3 (/) linking to URL #2.
Technical SEO | | H-FARM
Also we've submitted yesterday a Google News sitemap including consistently the list of URLs #2 from the last 48h . The sitemap has been properly "digested" by Google and shows that all URLs have been sent and indexed. However if we use the site:domain.com command on Google News we see something completely different: Google News has indexed actually only some news and more specifically only the URLs #3 type (ending with the trailing slash instead of /index.html). Why ? What's wrong ? a) Does Google News bot have problems indexing URLs ending with .index.html ? While figuring out what's wrong we've found out that http://news.google.it/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=inurl%3Aindex.html gives no results...it seems that Google News index overall does not include any URLs ending with /index.html b) Does Google News bot recognise rel=canonical tag ? c) Is it just a matter of time and then Google News will pick up the right URLs (/index.html) and/or shall we communicate Google News team any changes ? d) Any suggestions ? OR Shall we do the other way around. meaning make URL #3 the canonical one ? While Google News is showing these problems, Google Web search has actually well received the changes, so we don't know what to do. Thanks for your help, Matteo0 -
Existing Pages in Google Index and Changing URLs
Hi!! I am launching a newly recoded site this week and had a another noobie question. The URL structure has changed slightly and I have installed a 301 redirect to take care of that. I am wondering how Google will handle my "old" pages? Will they just fall out of the index? Or does the 301 redirect tell Google to rewrite the URLs in the index? I am just concerned I may see an "old" page and a "new" page with the same content in the index. Just want to make sure I have covered all my bases. Thanks!! Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0