Tell Google your Preferred Domain

Sometime ago I wrote an article titled “WWW or no-WWW“ where I explained that most sites can be accessed either through “http://www.domain.com” or “http://domain.com”. Leaving both domain versions working is not optimal because it might split your backlink count and consequently damage your search engine rankings.

Apart from setting a “301 Redirect” you can also use a Google featured called Webmaster Tools to inform Google about what domain version you prefer. This will make sure that Google handles the backlink count correctly and also that the right version will be displayed on search results.

Here is a quote from Google’s help center:

The preferred domain is the one that you would liked used to index your site’s pages (sometimes this is referred to as the canonical domain). Links may point to your site using both the www and non-www versions of the URL (for instance, http://www.example.com and http://example.com). The preferred domain is the version that you want used for your site in the search results. Once you tell us your preferred domain name, it may help us determine PageRank for your site more accurately.

Via: John Chow