(www.) to non www. or visa versa

[Becothy]

Being a complete noob at SEO (still am) and before I got Weebly I was using .htaccess files to redirect my www. domains to non www.domains and vice versa for a couple of sites I own.

For those that don't know, Google sees www. sites and none www. sites (for example http://www.yourdomain.com and http://youdomain.com) as two different entities and marks your site as duplicate. In the world of SEO duplication can damage your site....You need a permanent 301 redirect at server level to make sure Google knows what you are using....I think...

I have told Google, via the webmaster tools, which version of the site I want crawled, however without access to the server side of things, as it's on Weebly I can't change the htaccess file.

Am I wrong in assuming that this cannot be done with Weebly, or even needs to be done, being that Google knows which one to look at? 

[Adam7]

That's a great question!

We automatically forward the root domain to www.yourdomain.com for this reason (the exception being subdomains, which we don't so you don't end up with www.mysubdomain.mydomain.com), so you don't need to add that redirect in yourself.

This should prevent Google from seeing them as different sites, and it works in much the same way as forwarding a wholly separate domain name.  If your site is published to mydomain.com, and you forward myotherdomain.com to mydomain.com, all google knows is what it sees at www.mydomain.com.  It doesn't view myotherdomain.com or mydomain.com (without the www) as duplicate sites because the end destination of both is www.mydomain.com.

Setting up Webmaster Tools for www.mydomain.com and telling Google that this is the site you want indexed is definitely a good idea, though, and was a good move on your part.

[HannahGay]

Kudos on autoredirecting, but how do we get our weebly domains to display as bare (http://mydomain.com vs. http://www.mydomain.com)? I'd like to get rid of the www. Thanks!

[Adam7]

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@HannahGay wrote:

Kudos on autoredirecting, but how do we get our weebly domains to display as bare (http://mydomain.com vs. http://www.mydomain.com)? I'd like to get rid of the www. Thanks!

---

It's not actually possible to do that at the moment with Weebly.  That hasn't been suggested on our Vote on Features board yet, so I'd recommend adding it there if you would like us to add that as a feature.

[4rkids]

Foundation's website on old host had non-www address for eight years.  Now with Weebly, will lose eight years of search engine boosting because Weebly automatically makes everything go to www.  I wish they would put that in the welcome screen and let us know in the first place.

[skottiusa]

If Weebly automatically forwards the root domain to www.yourdomain.com (always including www), then how does this relate to site settings in Google webmaster tools (WMT)?

I keep reading that it's important to set a preferred domain in WMT and stick to it.

Display URLs as www.yourdomain.com

-or-

Display URLs as yourdomain.com (naked)

Does this mean that, for all Weebly sites, that yourdomain.com (naked) should not be selected as the preferred domain in Google WMT?

[Queso]

Hello skottiusa! While it would be down to your site's needs, if you're all right with either normally, I'd recommend keeping the www in place. However, you may be well-served seeking out an SEO expert for the best results.

[weeblyjosh]

Adam,

If Weebly automatically forwards the root domain so I do not need to add a redirect myself preventing Google from seeing them as different sites, then why do websites that assess for duplicate content see that my site is not returning a 301 redirect?  If a third-party website can find this duplicate, it seems that Google would find it too.  Please help me understand how this works.

Thanks,

Josh

[Adam7]

I don't know that we're doing a 301 redirect since mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com are technically two separate domains in the eyes of Google. We might be using a domain forward or something like that instead.

[davejames1234]

No weeblyjosh, they don't provide redirects for anything after the root. Google is seeing your content twice. 

[lokeshkmr]

Hi Adam,

Hope you are doing well. 

Currently I am facing a problem in which non www version of my domain name is not working but www version is working perfectly. 

I have just configure "A" name setting in DNS Management 

Name:  @

Destination: 199.34.228.65

Name:www

Destination: 199.34.228.65

Can you please sort out my problem as soon as possible.

Thanks and regards

mr. lokesh

[Adam7]

Sorry to hear that, @lokeshkmr. What's your domain name? I'll take a look.

[mistu]

I have exactly the same problem as @lokeshkmr. 

www version working fine, non-www version not working at all. 

Same configuration of DNS as @lokeshkmr.

Any solutions to this?

[Adam7 · Accepted solution]

It looks like you have an extra A record, @mistu:

mistu.es	A	184.168.221.41
mistu.es	A	199.34.228.48
www.mistu.es	A	199.34.228.48

If you remove that top record it should fix the problem for you.

[mistu]

It worked!! Thanks a lot

[Adam7]

Awesome!

[ManoClau]

---

I have the same problem. Can weebly solve it or is there any attribution I can do?

Domain with www. does not support google adsense in my case.

www.clarinsderoma.com.br    IP: 199.34.228.68

[vm19]

I've been following the discussion with interest but am unable to resolve my problem. All help appreciated!

Since the last couple of weeks or so, my site www.vijaymenon.com and its robots.txt file and site map have been "temporarily unreachable" when I request Google to crawl it. But the non-www version of the site is accessible and is being crawled. Since I have selected www as the preferred version in Google Search Console, and since this discussion board tells me that Weebly defaults to the www version, this is surprising.

My hosting service (Verio) says they haven't blocked Googlebot and can access the www site, robots.txt file, and site map. 

So I now have two versions of the site, the bare version and the www version. Of these, only the bare version is being crawled by Google. Since Google does not respond to queries, I haven't been able to check if they are the problem.

I'd like only the www version to be visible and to be crawled. Since the problem does not appear to be with the hosting service, is this a Weebly issue? 

Thanks for reading through this!

[Adam7]

Since you're using Weebly through a third party host, I can't log into your account to look at anything. That said, it sounds like what you would want to do is publish using www.vijaymenon.com as your site address, then set up a forward from the root domain to www.vijaymenon.com. I would ask your current host for help with setting up that forward.

[vm19]

Thanks Adam, I'll work with hosting service to set up a redirect. 

[Becothy]

Hi @Adam . Only taken me a couple of years to respond to this

I'm still seeing multiple versions of my site appear. Is this something that Weebly needs to sort or me? Site is stretcher bars 

Did this change when https came into play? 

Do you have a SEO guide on this sort of thing as its very confusing!