Have you notice the newest feature of Google Webmaster tools? If not then you need to view the latest inclusion “Linked From”. This will enable a webmaster to point out the page where the wrong URL is placed without making an extensive search. Previously, Webmasters could only get the report of “not found” errors but they were not in the position to locate the origin of the problem or to fix the problem. Therefore, the errors remained unchanged and the source of the errors went undetected. However, thanks to this addiction in Google Webmaster Tools, now webmasters can find out the source of the “404 pages” or “Not Found” urls easily. Besides that, this feature is giving them an opportunity to rectify these problems without wasting a long time. One just has to click on the link “Linked From” for locating the origin of the error and then work accordingly.

(Image Source : Google.com)

One fine morning, you wake up to discover that your website ranking dropped low and eventually fell out of the search engine. Isn’t it horrific! You are taken aback at the course of events. Your website is condemned of containing duplicate content.

This tale holds true for millions of website owners who experienced such terrifying times. Many websites deliberately attempt to copy contents, but there is another side of the story. In many cases you are caught in the web due to canonical issues. Yes! Canonical problems that have made web owners spent many sleepless nights.

Canonical Issues

The domain name of a website acts as its unique address. It introduces the website to the web visitors and the search engines.

In the early days of the web, the websites were set in the folder www on the World Wide Web server. It became mandatory to use the URL structure www.domain.com in order to access websites. Thus, it became a trend to accessing websites.

However, there are countless instances when many web development companies build up many address for a single website. The name of the website is either surrounded by dots in the beginning or in the end. Components were added in the name of the website like “. com”, “. net” and “. org” in the left as well as prefix like www . Normally, URL of a website has both the components. For instance, “ www.quality-web-solutions.com”. Nevertheless, there are instances when the prefix “www” is not incorporated. This gives rise to what is generally termed as www/non-www canonical issue.

The web visitors can make out that it is a single website, but the search engine robots are unable to identify it. The search engine robots index the single site twice under the two different URLs. In fact, the search engine perceives the same page as different pages with different URLs.

This may lead to disastrous consequences to your business. The single website is labeled of copying contents and sharing link benefits. The page ranking in the search engines results page falls rapidly. Your website falls short of the competitors as it is deprived of the actual page rankings.

Solve canonical problems

One the most widely used technique was the to add a text file i.e., “. htaccess file” in order store site and also server information. With the help of the “. htaccess file”, you may set up 301 redirect. There are two types of redirects. They are simple 301 redirect and permanent 301 redirect. The simple direct guides the robots from an old page to the new page. The permanent redirect informs the search engine robots that the web page or website has moved permanently and then directs it to the new page.

Google’s web master tools offer a quick and easy way to get rid of the canonical issue. The process is shown below. Go to the web master tools account. The URL is https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview”. Here, enter your site URL. Here, “ www.quality-web-solutions.com” has been entered. First select the tool option and then the select preferred domain option. Then, you go to the next page and select any one of the three options. It is wise to choose the first option. Click ok button and your Canonical Problem solved.