I had originally added my site: http://www.muralsandfauxpainting.com but later my hosting company told me to drop the www. in front of the
url. I noticed that on webmaster tools, both http://www.muralsandfauxpainting.com and http://muralsandfauxpainting.com are listed. One notes that I
need to add a sitemap. I don't want to get into any trouble. Should
I add the site map to the url without the www. or should I delete the
other site? I noticed that both sites are crawled but at different
times. Please let me know what to do. Does everyone who types the www.
before any url get redirected to the url without the www. these days?
Also, I asked someone to look into my images alt. text to see how come
they are not being indexed, yet the pics that are just graphics (like
red arrows) are indexed and they don't have alt. text on them. Thanks
for your help. I used to be on the first page and ever since I made
some changes to content and adding h1 tags and alt. text, I have been
on the second page at the bottom.
If someone clicks on my listing on Google, it takes them to the non www.
However, if I type in www. url, then it automatically goes to the
non.www site. In other words, the customers all go to the same site
whether they type www. or non www. url address. Does that mean it
already has the redirect? So I leave the 2 sites on my account page?
I have analytics on the non www. url address.
Thanks,
Sandy
> My advice would be to stick with www. if that is what you have been
> using.
> I would recommend that you do a 301 redirect of all URLs without www.
> to those with www. Having your site indexed twice is not really a good
> thing.
> As for your drop in rankings, this could be fore a number of reasons,
> such as your competitors doing better than you.
Dear David64,
Can you check and see if I did the 301 permanent redirect correctly?
Here is the code I added as a htaccess.txt file. I don't see how to
make it .htaccess file, if that's the way it should be named. Let me
know, please... :)
> My advice would be to stick with www. if that is what you have been
> using.
> I would recommend that you do a 301 redirect of all URLs without www.
> to those with www. Having your site indexed twice is not really a good
> thing.
> As for your drop in rankings, this could be fore a number of reasons,
> such as your competitors doing better than you.
The file MUST be called exactly .htaccess
NOT htaccess.txt
If you are creating it in Notepad, save using any name such as
htaccess.txt but then rename it to .htaccess either before or after
uploading to the root of your domain.
I regularly use the following to force www.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,R=301]
I'm not saying your version is wrong; there are several variations
around.
> Dear David64,
> Can you check and see if I did the 301 permanent redirect correctly?
> Here is the code I added as a htaccess.txt file. I don't see how to
> make it .htaccess file, if that's the way it should be named. Let me
> know, please... :)
> > My advice would be to stick with www. if that is what you have been
> > using.
> > I would recommend that you do a 301 redirect of all URLs without www.
> > to those with www. Having your site indexed twice is not really a good
> > thing.
> > As for your drop in rankings, this could be fore a number of reasons,
> > such as your competitors doing better than you.
Thanks for checking. On the second line of the code, should I put
^www.muralsandfauxpainting.com? On the 3rd line, is the .% where .com
goes with my url?
In the meantime, I changed the name of my file to .htaccess; how do I
check to see if I get the 200 success server response? Where do you
see that?
God bless,
Sandy
> The file MUST be called exactly .htaccess
> NOT htaccess.txt
> If you are creating it in Notepad, save using any name such as
> htaccess.txt but then rename it to .htaccess either before or after
> uploading to the root of your domain.
> I'm not saying your version is wrong; there are several variations
> around.
> Robbo
> On May 15, 9:25 pm, justsandy wrote:
> > Dear David64,
> > Can you check and see if I did the 301 permanent redirect correctly?
> > Here is the code I added as a htaccess.txt file. I don't see how to
> > make it .htaccess file, if that's the way it should be named. Let me
> > know, please... :)
> > > My advice would be to stick with www. if that is what you have been
> > > using.
> > > I would recommend that you do a 301 redirect of all URLs without www.
> > > to those with www. Having your site indexed twice is not really a good
> > > thing.
> > > As for your drop in rankings, this could be fore a number of reasons,
> > > such as your competitors doing better than you.
Forget the last letter I sent. My web hosting company doesn't allow me
to change .htaccess file. So I used .php file. Can you check to see
if this is acceptable as a 301 with Google. THANK YOU for your help!
> The file MUST be called exactly .htaccess
> NOT htaccess.txt
> If you are creating it in Notepad, save using any name such as
> htaccess.txt but then rename it to .htaccess either before or after
> uploading to the root of your domain.
> I'm not saying your version is wrong; there are several variations
> around.
> Robbo
> On May 15, 9:25 pm, justsandy wrote:
> > Dear David64,
> > Can you check and see if I did the 301 permanent redirect correctly?
> > Here is the code I added as a htaccess.txt file. I don't see how to
> > make it .htaccess file, if that's the way it should be named. Let me
> > know, please... :)
> > > My advice would be to stick with www. if that is what you have been
> > > using.
> > > I would recommend that you do a 301 redirect of all URLs without www.
> > > to those with www. Having your site indexed twice is not really a good
> > > thing.
> > > As for your drop in rankings, this could be fore a number of reasons,
> > > such as your competitors doing better than you.
> Forget the last letter I sent. My web hosting company doesn't allow me
> to change .htaccess file. So I used .php file. Can you check to see
> if this is acceptable as a 301 with Google. THANK YOU for your help!
Dear Phil,
This has been quite exhausting trying to be right with Google. Please
help me. The hosting company has set me up with Shopsite shopping
cart and to change now would be a headache. They say I have share
hosting so they can't change the .htaccess or it affects others
sharing the server. Can you explain why the way I did the 301 is not
acceptable. When someone enters www.url then they are redirected to
non www.url for my site. Is that not what Google wants? I chose the
non www. as my preferred domain on Google Webmaster Tools but now the
sitemap I changed for the non www. is O.K. but I need to either delete
the sitemap for the www. which has no www. in front of each page or
can I submit a new one with the www. for each page and call it
something else? I can't see where I can submit a different name than
sitemap.xml. Should I not submit another site map for the www. page.
The note Google gave me is WARNING cause the sitemap has all the www.
deleted from the pages and so none of the pages are being found.
HELP...PLEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Thank you.
Sandy
> > Forget the last letter I sent. My web hosting company doesn't allow me
> > to change .htaccess file. So I used .php file. Can you check to see
> > if this is acceptable as a 301 with Google. THANK YOU for your help!
Dear Robo,
I sometimes don't get answers back from those I specifically write
when they have taken the time to try to help me. I am trying to do
what's right. Last I checked for certain keywords, the non www. url
for my site was showing up but I went and checked today and it showed
my site in the same exact place but WITH the WWW.url for my site. I
chose the non www. as my preferred domain because ALL my inner links
on my site are with the non www. To change them all would be a
nightmare. So how come Google shows both the non www. and www. for
the same key word search in the same place.
> The file MUST be called exactly .htaccess
> NOT htaccess.txt
> If you are creating it in Notepad, save using any name such as
> htaccess.txt but then rename it to .htaccess either before or after
> uploading to the root of your domain.
> I'm not saying your version is wrong; there are several variations
> around.
> Robbo
> On May 15, 9:25 pm, justsandy wrote:
> > Dear David64,
> > Can you check and see if I did the 301 permanent redirect correctly?
> > Here is the code I added as a htaccess.txt file. I don't see how to
> > make it .htaccess file, if that's the way it should be named. Let me
> > know, please... :)
> > > My advice would be to stick with www. if that is what you have been
> > > using.
> > > I would recommend that you do a 301 redirect of all URLs without www.
> > > to those with www. Having your site indexed twice is not really a good
> > > thing.
> > > As for your drop in rankings, this could be fore a number of reasons,
> > > such as your competitors doing better than you.
