Google Preferred Domain
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If you’ve been having canonicalization (basically that means Google figuring out your whether you want to refer to your websites as www.domain.com or domain.com), Google has been attempting to offer a fix with their Google Preferred Domain setting, which lets you tell them which you want. The program was a bit confusing to people, so Google has clarified a bit, with instructions on setting the preferred domain.
How can this help my website?
It will mainly help if you’re experiencing canonicalization problems:
Once you tell us your preferred domain name, it may help us determine PageRank for your site more accurately
PageRank is still an important part of Google’s algo. In fact, it’s a huge factor because it determines the frequency at which your website is crawled. If your PR is “split” between the two seperate versions of your website (which are, in fact, identical). This would “fix it” by the webmaster telling Google exactly which way was intended.
# Consider all links that point to the site (whether those links use the www version or the non-www version) to be pointing at the version you prefer. This helps us more accurately determine PageRank for your pages.
# Once we know that both versions of a URL point to the same page, we try to select the preferred version for future crawls.
# Index pages of your site using the version you prefer. If some pages of your site are indexed using the www version and other pages are indexed using the non-www version, then over time, you should see a shift to the preference you’ve set.
I have to interject: this is a very strong indication that Google can’t figure out the problem on its’ own. If they could, they would never have to rely on manual intervention, which will only help webmasters who are aware of the problem.
That said, if this is indeed a problem you’re having, it makes complete sense to fix it, because on their own it’s doubtful Google ever will.
One major drawback: this solutions requires you to have a Google Sitemaps account.
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4 Responses to “Google Preferred Domain”
I recall reading recently that Google now don’t distinguish between www & non-www domains.
By TechZ on Sep 17, 2006
I definitely wouldn’t count on Google figuring it out, especially since they made a point out of adding the new tool. I’m pretty sure they have real problems with this.
By Darren McLaughlin on Sep 17, 2006