Can't set the preferred domain in the G WMT area: it says I have to verify NON-www!

[Clint1]

Curses these subject lines with a limit. As I was trying to say: Can't set the preferred domain prefix in the G WMT area because it says I have to now verify the non-www version.

This is insane, and I'm not surprised. I was looking at the G WMT area and I see they changed the description of setting a preferred domain prefix. They used to say this was ONLY for how your pages APPEARED in the search RESULTS--cosmetic only. Now it says something different about the way they "follow a link" to your site and actually treating non-www and www IBL's to your site totally differently. We all know their dumb bot has been doing this for years, and looking at www and non-www as duplicate content, hence the reason for a 301 redirect. But this is the first I have heard about setting this once-cosmetic-only preferred domain in the WMT area for this reason.

So, even though I have a 301 redirect going to www, I thought I would set my preferred domain to the www version in the WMT area. Well, I CAN'T! I dot the area for www, and get this:


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

WTF?? How in the hell can anyone "verify" a NON-www page when there is a 301 www redirect site-wide???? Furthermore, note that it is saying above that I have to verify the NON-www version, even though I'm directing to the www version. So, apparently trying to set a preferred version is totally useless for those using a 301 redirect!

I go to the verification area, and it says this:

Use this page to reverify all currently verified owners of this site.

Ensure the verification file or meta tag is still in place for your account.
Your verification file: google*****************.html
The meta tags or verification files below may exist on your site.

You are the only verified site owner.

Yet, it is still apparently saying that I have to verify the non-www version of my site. Brilliant.

So how is one supposed to set the preferred domain?? I know that even with this new description it still may not be necessary with a 301, but you know G, and you can't take any chances with them, they'll take any reason to penalize you.

Thanks Guys.

[Feydakin]

Stop.. Take a deep breath.. Count to 5.. Now let it out slowly..

How about dropping the redirect long enough to verify the non-www version of the site and then put it back up.. Should take about a minute..

[wige]

My guess is that it is a bug - I say that simply because I have verified sites through redirect in the past without issue, but Google has rolled out a new version of GWT and, well, stuff happens.

That said, try using the meta tag for now - that should work, as I just did one this morning.

[Feydakin]

I just went in to GWT and tried to set the preferred domain in WMT for a couple of site.. Nothing but error messages all over the place for using the separate file.. I didn't try the meta tag because I don't care enough about it to worry about it..

[SemAdvance]

Setting the preferred domain is refering to how the domain is displayed in the SERP. It never fixed the canonical URL issue which many webmasters mistakeningly thought / think that it did / does.

Canonical URLs is not much of a duplicate content issue, so much as it dilutes the PageRank of your site with links that point to http://www and www.

Diluting the PR of your site would as most know hurt your keyword rankings at times.

Best thing to do so that all engines affix the proper scoring to your website, is to fix things via mod rewrite for Apache Unix Linux boxes, or Isappi rewrite for windoze.

Below is the code for modification of apache server via the htaccess file

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourwebsite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourwebsite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

I have no clue how to fix it on windoze servers.....

Hope this helps

The original Clint ;->

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by wige

My guess is that it is a bug - I say that simply because I have verified sites through redirect in the past without issue, but Google has rolled out a new version of GWT and, well, stuff happens.

That said, try using the meta tag for now - that should work, as I just did one this morning.

See my post again, my site is already verified, has been for many years. (And I don't use the meta tag, I use the .html file). The problem is they are claiming I need to verify the non-www version which can't be done on sites that use a 301 redirect.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Setting the preferred domain is refering to how the domain is displayed in the SERP. It never fixed the canonical URL issue which many webmasters mistakeningly thought / think that it did / does.

Not anymore, see my post again, that has apparently changed. I found the page again mentioning this:

"Once you tell us your preferred domain name, we use that information for all future crawls of your site and indexing refreshes. For instance, if you specify your preferred domain as http://www.example.com and we find a link to your site that is formatted as http://example.com, we follow that link as http://www.example.com instead. In addition, we'll take your preference into account when displaying the URLs. 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."

Canonical URLs is not much of a duplicate content issue, so much as it dilutes the PageRank of your site with links that point to http://www and www.

Best thing to do so that all engines affix the proper scoring to your website, is to fix things via mod rewrite for Apache Unix Linux boxes, or Isappi rewrite for windoze.

Below is the code for modification of apache server via the htaccess file

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourwebsite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourwebsite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

See my post again, I don't have any Canonical domain issue, I'm already using a 301 redirect.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

I just went in to GWT and tried to set the preferred domain in WMT for a couple of site.. Nothing but error messages all over the place for using the separate file.. I didn't try the meta tag because I don't care enough about it to worry about it..

Strange, must be a bug then. I just checked and tried this again and I'm getting the same garbage I got yesterday (which is different from what you're getting).

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

How about dropping the redirect long enough to verify the non-www version of the site and then put it back up.. Should take about a minute..

It would seem that's what I'm going to have to do. I just remembered that I did set this preference a couple of years or so ago with no problem*. So this is obviously yet another bug in their new screwed up new interface. (This is yet another time when they couldn't leave well enough alone).

*The reason I changed it back was it seemed to have negative affects, but that could have been coincidental, so I wanted to try it again.

[Clarrie]

Hi Clint

Have several sites on the same WMT account, and had the problem for the first time adding a new site. All the other sites are set up the same, and previously had no difficulty setting the preference, so concluded that its something new in WMT, and went looking for answers.

I came across this post problem setting preferred domain - Webmaster Help

Which sort of makes sense really. Don't know if its the "right" answer, but it was enough for me to leave it for the moment and see if a "real" problem turned up later!

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by Clarrie

Hi Clint

Have several sites on the same WMT account, and had the problem for the first time adding a new site. All the other sites are set up the same, and previously had no difficulty setting the preference, so concluded that its something new in WMT, and went looking for answers.

I came across this post problem setting preferred domain - Webmaster Help

Which sort of makes sense really. Don't know if its the "right" answer, but it was enough for me to leave it for the moment and see if a "real" problem turned up later!

Thanks. So I guess what they are saying is to just not worry about it. But that still leaves the bug in the WMT area.