Canonical Problems

If you've been directed here by me then it's because your site, it seems, has a canonical problem. This means your page rank, trust rank, Google brownie points, whatever you want to call them, are currently and needlessly split between two sites. This means you probably aren't ranking as high as you should be, aren't getting the traffic, aren't making the money... need I say more?

One site is http://example.com

The other site is http://www.example.com

But... they're the same site! you cry, having peered at both on-line (I'm guessing).

Well, despite the fact that in many cases they do look the same and have the same content, no they're not the same, actually. The exact reasons why they're not are forbiddingly technical, but all we mortals need to know is Google sees them as different and affords them both a separate and distinct status in it's search results. That gives us a problem and we have to find a way of addressing it.

You can tell if you've got the problem by opening http://yoursite.com in your browser. If http://www.yoursite.com is what you see in the address bar when you've opened it (note the www is present in it, but not in what you typed in), then I'd guess you're ok, it probably means your site's being properly forwarded. But if after you've opened it there's a holding page from your hosting company, or there's your old familiar site but in the address bar it still says http://yoursite.com. then it appears you do indeed have the canonical problem.

Still confused? Go type http://kruse.co.uk (that's without the "www" bit) into your browser and open it. What you'll see is my site and in the address bar you'll see http://www.kruse.co.uk (which is with the "www" bit) because it gets forwarded. If something similar isn't happening with your site, then you need to have it sorted.

If your site is hosted on a Unix server, then you can probably fix this (or, what maybe better if you're new to all this, have your host fix it - this can be problematic if you get it wrong) in the .htaccess file. That'll be in the root directory of your site, and it'll probably be a hidden file. You can address the canonical problem, assuming this doesn't interfere with anything else already in there, by putting something along the lines of

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(([^/]+/)*)index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule index\.html$ http://www.example.com/%1 [R=301,L]

in it, substituting, of course, whatever your site is for example.com in the above, er, example.

This redirects an entire site to the home page of a different site;

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

It goes in the .htaccess file of the site you need to be redirecting

Did any of that at all sound like Greek, or maybe Double-Dutch to you? Probably best if you called your web host and got them to do it, then. They usually can, there should be a way.

You would think, wouldn't you, that Google, being as dependant upon serving relevant results as they are, would have taken care of this themselves by now.

Hmmmm...

All this applies if you're on some kind of Apache/Linux server. If you're on a Microsoft server there's another way of addressing the canonical problem. Details at 301 redirect for Windows servers.

If your web host moans about any of this... get another one! More on that at Bad Web Hosts.

But for now, you take care of that canonical problem!