Tell Google your Preferred Domain
Sometime ago I wrote an article titled “WWW or no-WWW“ where I explained that most sites can be accessed either through “http://www.domain.com” or “http://domain.com”. Leaving both domain versions working is not optimal because it might split your backlink count and consequently damage your search engine rankings.
Apart from setting a “301 Redirect” you can also use a Google featured called Webmaster Tools to inform Google about what domain version you prefer. This will make sure that Google handles the backlink count correctly and also that the right version will be displayed on search results.
Here is a quote from Google’s help center:
The preferred domain is the one that you would liked used to index your site’s pages (sometimes this is referred to as the canonical domain). Links may point to your site using both the www and non-www versions of the URL (for instance, http://www.example.com and http://example.com). The preferred domain is the version that you want used for your site in the search results. Once you tell us your preferred domain name, it may help us determine PageRank for your site more accurately.
Via: John Chow
Sign-up To The Newsletter And Get A Free eBook
- Sign-up to the Daily Blog Tips newsletter and you will be able to download the "Make Money Blogging" eBook for free (worth $47).
- You will also receive tips to improve your blog, strategies to make money and useful resources from around the web.
17 Responses to “Tell Google your Preferred Domain”
Sponsors
Popular Articles
- 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website
- 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
- 4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic
- How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
- Top 25 SEO Blogs
- 101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006
- 30 Traffic Generation Tips
- 6 Ways to Speed Up Your Site
- 9 Hacks to Show Readers Your Best Stuff
- 50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers
- The Best Website Taglines
- What Is Success?
- How to setup a 301 Redirect
- The 7 Characteristics of Good Domains
- 7 Ways to Promote your Site
- Top 25 Celebrity Blogs
- What Is A Blog?
- Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips
- 10 Tips To Write Your Most Popular Post
- The Blog Post Checklist
- Interview: 12 Top Online Entrepreneurs
- What Is Bounce Rate?
- 20 SEO Terms You Should Know
- How To Choose A Blog Name
- 10 Tips to Sell Your Website on Flippa
- Top 25 Web Design Blogs
This is a great tip and really easy to do. I use blogger and just got my custom domain, but I’m still trying to figure out how to get the non-www to point to my blog (only the www does); also, now Technorati recognizes the two addresses (custom and blogspot) as two different blogs, which is not a good thing for rankings either.
I recommend the WordPress WWW Redirect Plugin for this sort of thing. Installed on all of my blogs!
http://www.justinshattuck.com/wordpress-www-redirect-plugin/
True, I used this plugin also sometime ago and it was very efficient. In the future I will write a post about setting 301 redirects manually.
Good tip. I knew about 301 Redirect. And I use Google Webmaster Tools, but I hadn’t look at the Preferred Domain option yet. Thanks.
My English Is poor but I am good textile craftsman, please see my site.Wery worried paid $60 to google adwords, not one miserable order in a whole week, Dont know what to do. Need help how can I find clients, and what must I do that clents find me.? Thank you, papajoe
I forgot to show you my site address which is http://www.picturesonfabric.com THanks papajoe
Does anyone know if this feature in Google Sitemaps works ?? (preferred domain)
Let me know if you have any experience with this – thanks!
hi all,
i would like to have a post in google search. i mean when some one entered my e-mail or my name then he can see some profiles about me. is that possible?
thanks indeed
hossein
what are the advantages of using custom domain?
Thanks for your tips
thanks for this tip this helped me to configure in webmasters tool … till now i dint set any option for that .. anyway thanks frnd…
Yes, I agree with you because many bloggers often leave the comment with different domain, in a page they use www but in other pages they use without www. This is a mistake. Thanks.
I am lucky enough that I use drupal as my blogging platform. It’s htaccess supports this kind of redirection natively. Yet this google webmaster tools is the easiest workaround you can get, if you don’t bother about yahoo or other search engines at all
I think that using preferred and non-preferred domains matters a lot becuase it help in back links and search ranking as well.
i have a blog which i made using google blogger is it possible to remove the .blogspot thing from the address????
please help me
In response to Raj unless I’m mistaken you can’t remove blogspot from your blog URL if it’s hosted on blogger’s server. You can move your blog to your own URL if you have one though.
Good article Daniel, one question I have is which is better http://www.example.com or example.com? To clarify, does one rank better?