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08-16-2011, 03:42 PM
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Join Date: 08-10-11
Location: Scotland, UK
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My Website - Domain Canonicalization Issue
I am using "SEO Engine" to crawl my website & tell me things that need improved.
It is saying my website has "Domain Canonicalization Issue".
The SEO Engine help page says..
"This occurs when your Web Server is serving the same data on different Subdomains. For example, http://www.mydomain.com and http://mydomain.com returning the same data would be a Domain Canonicalization Issue."
I don't have any sub-domains! So i dont understand that!
I think this problem is causing other problems too! SEO Engine is also saying..
"Exact Duplicate Webpages are present"
"Duplicate META Titles are present"
"Duplicate META Descriptions are present"
I dont know how this can be because my website only has one page!
Can anybody help me with this at all?
Any pointers on how to solve this issue?
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08-16-2011, 08:05 PM
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Well technically "www" is a subdomain. A lot of people are preferring to do their sites with no subdomains allowed for their main site, IE: http://www.mydomain.com points to http://mydomain.com. The reason for this, with my limited understanding, is that the search engines actually treat "www.****.com" and "****.com" as two different sites as far as hits go, so if you have a popular page, let's say "http://www.awesomesite.com/mypage.php" and it gets a lot of hits but it also has links going to "http://awesomesite.com/mypage.php" then the search engines will treat those as two different pages, instead of all being the same page.
So long story short, to get around that issue you'd probably need to do a code or server redirect, depending on what kind of server you're using. If you're running a standard LAMP stack or WAMP stack, you can get away with an .htaccess or httpd.conf file modification to redirect all www.blah.com traffic to just blah.com. Alternatively, you can direct all blah.com traffic to www.blah.com.
As far as the duplicate meta titles / descriptions present... if you have only one page on your site, I have no idea how it would come to that conclusion  Maybe I just don't know enough about SEO for that ....
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08-17-2011, 12:35 AM
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Is it Linux server or IIS?
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08-17-2011, 04:09 AM
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Join Date: 08-10-11
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As far as the duplicate meta titles / descriptions present... If you are saying that www.domain.co.uk & domain.co.uk are treated as differant websites, then i would imagine that this is causing the dublicate content issue as the search engine will find 2 webpages with exatly the same on them.
also..
Does it matter which domain i forward to the other? by this i mean..
I have been building backlinks to "www.domain.co.uk". So i want to keep that as the main URL. or does this not matter?
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08-17-2011, 04:34 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean101
As far as the duplicate meta titles / descriptions present... If you are saying that www.domain.co.uk & domain.co.uk are treated as differant websites, then i would imagine that this is causing the dublicate content issue as the search engine will find 2 webpages with exatly the same on them.
also..
Does it matter which domain i forward to the other? by this i mean..
I have been building backlinks to "www.domain.co.uk". So i want to keep that as the main URL. or does this not matter? |
No, My friend google do not treat them as two different websites as a whole but only two different urls. There are other examples of canonical urls like a www.xyz.abc/ and abc.xyz/ with a slash behind the domain. Applying a 301 redirect easily resolves this issue. And yes, for the domain you are building backlink should be the main url and redirect the non www one to it.
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08-17-2011, 05:04 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saurabhisbc
Applying a 301 redirect easily resolves this issue. And yes, for the domain you are building backlink should be the main url and redirect the non www one to it.
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Iv been told that if i add <link rel='canonical' href='http://domain/path/file' /> to the <head> changing the "http://domain/path/file" to the URL i want search engines to use as the main one(in my case http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/index.html).
My host & website builder is WebStarts.com & i bought the domain from 123-Reg.co.uk.
One of the main problems i have is that i cant seem to access the <head> of my page using webstarts.
Do you know how i could do this?
Also..
I noticed 123-Reg.co.uk has an option to forward URLs.
It didnt seem to work though! I left the forwarding on for about a week, even though it says it should work after 24hrs. If you look at the Attachment i added below you can see the screenshot of the page on 123-Reg for web forwarding. I added "http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/index.html" in the box then click confirm. Is there something else i should have done?
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08-18-2011, 04:04 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimfaster
Omai Canonical Problem?
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What do you mean?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimfaster
What url did you use to promote your site? With or without the www?
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I use http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/index.html in the backlinks & to promote the site.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimfaster
You can go to Google Webmaster Tool and select the URL of the domain that you like the exclusive domain for your site
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I done this.. I choose to use http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk as the preffered domain instead of http://earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk.
But it doesnt give me the option to change it to http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/index.html !
Last edited by snakeair; 08-18-2011 at 06:51 AM.
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08-18-2011, 04:40 AM
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Location: Chennai, India
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saurabhisbc
No, My friend google do not treat them as two different websites as a whole but only two different urls. There are other examples of canonical urls like a www.xyz.abc/ and abc.xyz/ with a slash behind the domain. Applying a 301 redirect easily resolves this issue. And yes, for the domain you are building backlink should be the main url and redirect the non www one to it. |
i think google treat them as different site, i am not sure.
If you add "domain.co.in" on google web-masters and if you specify the sitemap with URLs "www.domain.co.in" then it will not accept.. i do not know the reason.
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08-18-2011, 06:22 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean101
What do you mean?
I use http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/index.html in the backlinks & to promote the site.
I done this.. I choose to use http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk as the preffered domain instead of http://earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk.
But it doesnt give me the option to change it to http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/index.html !
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That's because /index.html is a terrible url to have as a canonical one. I added a line to the code I give below to solve your problem. In the future, don't EVER use index.html in your links. It's just bad.
As for the original problem, every website deals with this issue whether you notice it or not. The most common way to do it is to use an HTACCESS file. Put a file named .htaccess (nothing in front of it, and make sure you don't actually have a file called .htaccess.txt) in the web root (where your main index.html file is). Just add this code to it:
Code:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.YOURWEBSITE.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.YOURWEBSITE.com/index.html$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/$1 [R=301,L]
No other method is as effective as this, and it's very simple. If you can't figure it out, google it and figure it out. It's webmastering 101.
Last edited by snakeair; 08-18-2011 at 06:52 AM.
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08-24-2011, 02:32 AM
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Join Date: 08-10-11
Location: Scotland, UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by troyfawkes
That's because /index.html is a terrible url to have as a canonical one. In the future, don't EVER use index.html in your links. It's just bad.
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Ok, i will keep this in mind.
Is there any particular reason why using /index.html is bad?
Also.. When you say "In the future, don't EVER use index.html in your links", Do you mean i should stop using /index.html in my links to now& start using just "http://www.domain.co.uk/" from now on for this website? or Are you just meaning for any future websites i have don't use /index.html?
Quote:
Originally Posted by troyfawkes
As for the original problem, every website deals with this issue whether you notice it or not. The most common way to do it is to use an HTACCESS file. Put a file named .htaccess (nothing in front of it, and make sure you don't actually have a file called .htaccess.txt) in the web root (where your main index.html file is). Just add this code to it:
Code:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.YOURWEBSITE.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.YOURWEBSITE.com/index.html$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/$1 [R=301,L]
No other method is as effective as this, and it's very simple. If you can't figure it out, google it and figure it out. It's webmastering 101. |
I use Webstarts.com to host, build & design my website. Could you please have a quick look at there website to tell me if you think its possible to do what your telling me to do.
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08-24-2011, 11:15 AM
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Yes my dublicate content is being caused by search engines finding 2 differant versions of my URL & classing them as 2 differant websites instead of one.
But.. The URLs are not "www.domain.co.uk" & "domain.co.uk" - They are "/" & "/index.html"
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08-24-2011, 11:25 AM
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Here is a 301 redirect I found that works for me. This redirect will point all non-www to www. And, this is the recommended method for fixing canonical issues:
PHP Code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomain\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Place this in your .htaccess file on the first line. Replace "yourdomain" with you actual domain.
Last edited by snakeair; 01-11-2012 at 03:07 AM.
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01-10-2012, 06:40 PM
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I created a file using notepad and called it htaccess, I uploaded it to my website. In the file, it has the following code..
PHP Code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.earntopqualitygadgetsonline\.co.uk$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
But when i visit http://earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/ it still doesnt change to http://www.earntopqualitygadgetsonline.co.uk/.
Have i done the code wrong or something?
Last edited by snakeair; 01-11-2012 at 03:07 AM.
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