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Why to set your preferred domain
Going supplemental and poor pagerank distribution have been around for along time. In fact, flaky results in Google and being dropped out of the main index for my “keyword” (that sells 90% of my product via Google) is what forced me to get into SEO.
In 2003 I asked the following (notice how nobody answered, there was no Matt Cutts back then and Google had terrible support)
Hello folks,
Google dropped my longer URL (www.ne-design.net) for the short (ne-design.net - without the www) URL with a troubling result, loss of top 10 page position for the search terms “rain barrel” and “rain
barrels”. The strange thing is that it picked the URL (ne-design.net) over (www.ne-design.net) with higher page rank and many more back links. Shouldn’t a page with more links pointing to it and higher
page rank be indexed? Why did it do this to me?I repeat:
Why did the googlebot choose short URL for a already ranked and positioned longer URL? Shouldn’t it have chosen the one with all the backlinks pointing to it and higher page rank?
*WARNING* I was hosted on Godaddy.com right around the time google started dropping folks entire sites from the index. I moved quick to another host and this might be part of it BUT I can not get an answer on this either.
Thanks in advance,
-Aaron
The amazing part about this is that people still hit Google Groups and SEO forums every day complaining of similar issues. Setting your preferred domain is as simple as choosing which one you want in Google Webmaster Tools. Newbies are in luck and do not have to suffer what is known as canonicalization as much these days.
Things to remember:
- It’s good to set your preferred domain early in website development.
- www.yoursite.com is much more likely to be linked to than yoursite.com without the “www” so you might want to pick the URL with the “www”.
- Sites with low PR are more likely to “bounce” around in Google without a preferred domain set just as mine once did until I settled the score with what webmasters call a “301 redirect”.
Go: set the preferred domain now if you haven’t already.
Similar Post:
April 9th, 2007 at 9:31 am
ah so confusing subject but I’m beginning to understand. You would say with www is more likely to be linked to, is it? lazy typers not I think. but on the other hand, when you enter domain.com in any browser it automatically points to http://www.
not sure what to use anymore …
April 9th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Alex - In general when people link to sites they use the www so for a new site to choose the www might be a better choice.
As long as you have your preferred domain chosen and your 301 redirect establish search engines like Google might no longer have a problem with what was known as canonicals.