Setting a preferred domain

  • Unknown's avatar
    grovechurch · Member ·

    I am trying to set a preferred domain in Google’s webmaster tools. Since wordpress.com redirects all urls with the www in it to the nonwww counterpart (example: http://www.grovechurch.com becaomes grovechurch.com), I wanted to tell google that grovechurch.com was my preferred domain. Here is the problem. I have grovechurch.com verifies, but when I try to set that as my preferred domain in Google Webmaster tools, it says this:

    “Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://www.grovechurch.com/. Please verify http://www.grovechurch.com/.”

    Is there any way to do the verification process for the www version, just so I can set the preferred domain?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    husdal · Member ·

    Have you tried verifying the www-version? I know you don’t have a www-version but have to tried registering and and verifying your domain again, but pretending it to be a www-version?

  • Unknown's avatar
    dreamsburnred · Member ·

    No way to verify the www. domain, and no need. Google and other search engines will automatically notice www. points to the address with no www.

  • Unknown's avatar
    husdal · Member ·

    dreamsburned,
    There is a need:
    http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=44231&hl=en
    If you don’t specify a preferred domain, we may treat the www and non-www versions of the domain as separate references to separate pages.

    If I link to the same post on your blog once using www and once using non-www, Google will read that as two links to two separate posts. In the end this may influence where your blog post shows up in search results, because instead of 1000 people linking to the same post, you have 437 linking to one post and 563 linking to another (although the same) post. Consequently that post is not as “important” as some posts with 1000 people linking to it correctly with the preferred domain.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dreamsburnred · Member ·

    No. WordPress.com and wordpress.org blogs 301 www to non-www. Google will automatically follow the new url including page rank.

    Blogspot on the other hand can have the www non www harmful affect.

  • Unknown's avatar
    grovechurch · Member ·

    I have checked, and the google team does say that 301 redirects will effectively tell google to go to the other version. See this video from Google if interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9onOGTgeM

    Thanks everyone, this issue is resolved.

  • Unknown's avatar
    grovechurch · Member ·

    Thanks dreamsburnred by the way!

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    Thanks to everyone for sharing this so we all can read and understand what the score is. :)

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