www, non www, 301 redirects & Google webmaster tools

[jpf566]

arg! Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated! This is in regards to sheffieldfurniture .com In October of 2011 I had our host set up a redirect for our site so all non www requests would be redirected to the www version and it works great (so it seems at least)

Recently I signed up for SEOMOZ pro and when I started trying to track my organic results for various keywords I realized that Google has my site indexed in the non www format.

Is this a problem? I’ve read you can tell google what your preferred domain is in Google Webmaster Tools, is that what I should be doing? Are there any negatives to doing that? I’m just confused as to why Google hasn’t noticed or acknowledged the redirect in 4 months. It makes me wonder if something isn’t working properly?

I have since added a second SEOMOZPRO campaign with the non www version but I’m worried about having historical tracking issues if I then tell google to use the www version…

[bhartzer]

Is this a problem?

If you are redirecting non-www to www and Google has non-www pages indexed, then it doesn't look like it's working very well, huh?

I would make sure that those redirects really ARE 301 permanent redirects. Then, crawl the site yourself using a search engine spider/crawl (you might try Screaming Frog's SEO spider) and test it out all yourself.

Then, go into Google Webmaster Tools and make sure you have the preferred domain set as www. That should fix the problem.

But, first you need to check the 301 redirects to make sure that they're actually working properly.

[JohnW]

I took a quick look at your header responses... whoever did the redirect did it wrong. It's not a 301, it's a 302. What a confusing mess. You should fix the redirect ASAP.

[AussieWebmaster]

it is amazing how many people are using 302s lately - why doesn't every system default to 301 - and have a http access guide to using redirects

[JohnW]

You mostly see this on sites running on Microsoft IIS servers, seems the IIS default redirect is a 302.

To me, what's amazing is how many people are still using MS to run a web site.

[vrmarokia]

Originally Posted by JohnW

You mostly see this on sites running on Microsoft IIS servers, seems the IIS default redirect is a 302.

To me, what's amazing is how many people are still using MS to run a web site.

i really admire your answer. You are absolutely correct.