Canonical issues or “What the heck is the name of this site?”
I used to think that only the Vatican had “canonical” issues. I guess that’s because I am Catholic, and never new of any other institution that would spell “canon” with only one “n.” Well it turns out, Google may have canonical issues with your site. It has something to do with how your site appears to be named.
Of course, we don’t actually get a copy of any kind of canon law or algorithm book. I think the Google scribes have only one copy of it, and they keep it chained to a wall in a locked room underground. No one really knows the mind of Google. However, we do know that Google is interested in how you name your url. It looks at the site, and picks the url that best represents the site. This is usually the url that you see when you look at the address bar when you are on the home page. This process of picking the url name is the way your site is “canonized.”
Most people would consider these urls to be the same:
agentblogbuzz.com
www.agentblogbuzz.com
In one sense, they are correct; type either address into the address bar and you go to the same place. If you use http://agentblogbuzz.com or http://www.agentblogbuzz.com, you will still land on the home page of this site.
However, Google actually considers these urls to be two different sites. Here is where the www or non-www becomes a crucial issue. It is not a good idea to cause Google any confusion here.
The best way to do this is to use the same url consistently across the site. For example, don’t use www on half of the pages, and non-www version on the other half. When creating internal links, always use the same url.
Can you change your default url to www or non-www url? Yes, you can. You can do what is called a “301 redirect” to direct requests to your server from http://www.yourdomain.com to http://yourdomain.com, for example. However, you might want to be careful about doing this. If you know that you have a lot of external backlinks to the www version, for example you may not want to change to the non-www version, because Goggle won’t give you credit for them. If you have already done this anyway, do a 301 redirect from the www to the non-www url version. Eventually, Google juice from those backlinks to the old url name will be given to the new url name. If you are unable to do a 301 redirect yourself, your web host should be able to help you. However, some folks claim that there may still be a temporary drop in search engine ranking. Whatever you do, do not use a url removal tool to eliminate the url name you wish to drop. Your site could drop out of Google for six months.
Are you unsure about what your url should be? If you are one of my clients, this issue has already been resolved for you. If not, here is a useful tool to help you decide whether to go with the www or non www version:
Canonical issues or “What the heck is the name of this site?”
I used to think that only the Vatican had “canonical” issues. I guess that’s because I am Catholic, and never new of any other institution that would spell “canon” with only one “n.” Well it turns out, Google may have canonical issues with your site. It has something to do with how your site appears to be named.
Of course, we don’t actually get a copy of any kind of canon law or algorithm book. I think the Google scribes have only one copy of it, and they keep it chained to a wall in a locked room underground. No one really knows the mind of Google. However, we do know that Google is interested in how you name your url. It looks at the site, and picks the url that best represents the site. This is usually the url that you see when you look at the address bar when you are on the home page. This process of picking the url name is the way your site is “canonized.”
Most people would consider these urls to be the same:
agentblogbuzz.com
www.agentblogbuzz.com
In one sense, they are correct; type either address into the address bar and you go to the same place. If you use http://agentblogbuzz.com or http://www.agentblogbuzz.com, you will still land on the home page of this site.
However, Google actually considers these urls to be two different sites. Here is where the www or non-www becomes a crucial issue. It is not a good idea to cause Google any confusion here.
The best way to do this is to use the same url consistently across the site. For example, don’t use www on half of the pages, and non-www version on the other half. When creating internal links, always use the same url.
Can you change your default url to www or non-www url? Yes, you can. You can do what is called a “301 redirect” to direct requests to your server from http://www.yourdomain.com to http://yourdomain.com, for example. However, you might want to be careful about doing this. If you know that you have a lot of external backlinks to the www version, for example you may not want to change to the non-www version, because Goggle won’t give you credit for them. If you have already done this anyway, do a 301 redirect from the www to the non-www url version. Eventually, Google juice from those backlinks to the old url name will be given to the new url name. If you are unable to do a 301 redirect yourself, your web host should be able to help you. However, some folks claim that there may still be a temporary drop in search engine ranking. Whatever you do, do not use a url removal tool to eliminate the url name you wish to drop. Your site could drop out of Google for six months.
Are you unsure about what your url should be? If you are one of my clients, this issue has already been resolved for you. If not, here is a useful tool to help you decide whether to go with the www or non www version:
http://oyoy.eu/site/www-or-not/
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