canonicalization

[wright67uk]

Im having trouble with my site listing in google.

I have every page of my site listed in google but only for

i-stevenage.co.uk

I want google to list

www.i-stevenage.co.uk instead.

I believe this is called canonicalization!?!

 

If i were to put the below code into my site pages, would it do the job?

if yes, then where would I place it?

 

would it have to be the first line of my code?

 

if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],0,3) != 'www')

{

  header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');

  header('Location: http://www.' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

}

 

and for my index page...

 

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == '/index.php')

{

  header( 'HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently' );

  header( 'Location: http://www.i-stevenage.co.uk/' );

}

[per1os]

Honestly, and this is just my opinion, I would not even care about the www. It is just 4 extra items people have to type and there is no benefit to having www. I made that mistake with my site and I wish I never did the www.

 

Just my two cents.

 

Instead of doing that in PHP, use a .htaccess, this will require mod_rewrite to be enabled:

 

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^i-stevenage.co.uk
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.i-stevenage.co.uk/$1 [R=permanent,L]

 

That should get you where you want to be without having to mess with the PHP side of it.

[wright67uk]

What mistake did you make?

 

Im not so concerned about what the user types in, I just want all of my visitors, links, google ranking to go to

www.i-stevenage.co.uk opposed to i-stevenage.co.uk,

but yes I see what your saying on the user side of things.

 

Im not sure if mod_rewrite is enabled as godaddy only allow access to it via linux hosted sites and im windows hosted.

 

I havent put the if server script on my site yet, and now im curious of what effects it had on your site!?!

[per1os]

www. is not any seo friendlier, just an FYI I do not think it makes much difference, other than your URL will always be 4 characters shorter no matter what.

 

If you want to test it and do not know if you have mod_rewrite enabled you can wrap it in an if statement:

 

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^i-stevenage.co.uk
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.i-stevenage.co.uk/$1 [R=permanent,L]
</IfModule>

 

This way your site won't break if mod_rewrite is not on. To test if it is working, you just have to goto the non-www version of your site and it should 301 redirect you to the www. version.