Canonicalization Prevention Guide

[edhan]

Hi wige

After I add:

RewriteRule ^/index\.(php|html)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R=301, L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/index\.(php|html)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1/ [R=301, L]

It gave me Error 500.

I have no problem when I use this:

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

Any idea?

Finally, I tried using Webnauts

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.html?\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html?$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

And it works fine! So now I have no problem of getting it displays as:

www.mydomain.com

for index.php or index.html

Thanks Webnauts!

[google consultant]

WIGE,
great post. Very useful for a client I have. I have gone into the site and used full domain to homepage rather than .index.html. But adding the code into the htaccess file is a great backup. Keep up the good work.

[ericajoieake]

The domain with www and without www are two different domain so there's nothing for you to worry about, but I suggest to own both of the domain and redirect to your chosen main url, to be able to gather all the traffics coming from both domains.

[edhan]

The domain with www and without www are two different domain so there's nothing for you to worry about, but I suggest to own both of the domain and redirect to your chosen main url, to be able to gather all the traffics coming from both domains.

But both with www and without www are the same content. I have read somewhere that it might be taken as duplicate content so that is why I am using canonicalization.

[Webnauts]

The domain with www and without www are two different domain so there's nothing for you to worry about, but I suggest to own both of the domain and redirect to your chosen main url, to be able to gather all the traffics coming from both domains.

How can someone own a domain with www and not without www, and the way around?

[deepsand]

The domain with www and without www are two different domain so there's nothing for you to worry about, but I suggest to own both of the domain and redirect to your chosen main url, to be able to gather all the traffics coming from both domains.

The prefix "www" is not part of the Domain Name, but rather an identifier which serves to denote which Internet system or service, in this case "World Wide Web," is being used to communicate with whatever resides at that domain.

Other commonly used services include File Transfer Protocol (ftp) & Internet Relay Chat (irc).

A Domain Name, on the other hand, serves as an identifier of a specific resource that exists within the Internet.

[webmax]

Wige,
Thank you for your help. Excellent post. We come back to it often to check for solutions.

[nashville]

How can I tell if I have Canonicalization issues at pilotjourney.com

[Dubbya]

How can I tell if I have Canonicalization issues at pilotjourney.com

You do.

You want pilotjourney.com to resolve to www.pilotjourney.com. Presently, it doesn't.

Essentially, you want the server to check all queries to ensure that they include the "www." portion of the URL. If they don't, you want the server to rewrite the URL to include the "www.".

Ya follow?

Considering that you're running a .php site, you should be able to find the help you need to set up the rewrite script properly.

Good Luck.

[kgun]

I searched this page for

preferred domain name (No hits)

and

Matt Cutts (Found Johns post with the link I had in mind)

This post is in the SEO sub forum.

What about Google's:

preferred domain name?

KW search:

preferred domain name site:google.com