COCO3515
asked on
Problem with web address without www
Greetings!
If someone enters our web address in their browser without the www, it would show page could not be found.
But, if they enter www in front of our web address, it would bring them to our website. We never paid attention to this until we received a warning from Google Analytics recently as shown below. I guess Google is recommending us to setup our website in a way where it would open if someone doesn't enter www. infront of our web address. Is there a way to configure our website as suggested by Google? Thank you!
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Property http://www.xyz.com is receiving data from redundant hostnames. Some of the redundant hostnames are:
• xyz.com
• www.xyz.com
Redundant hostnames are counted as separate rows in reports, so hits that are going to the same page on your site from different hostnames will be split into multiple rows. With data split across multiple rows, traffic to specific pages will appear lower than it actually is.
To avoid this problem, consider setting up a 301 redirect from one of your redundant hostnames to the other, or create a search-and-replace filter that strips "www." from hostnames.
Google Tag Assistant Recordings can help you verify that your redirect is setup correctly, or that your filter is working as intended.
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If someone enters our web address in their browser without the www, it would show page could not be found.
But, if they enter www in front of our web address, it would bring them to our website. We never paid attention to this until we received a warning from Google Analytics recently as shown below. I guess Google is recommending us to setup our website in a way where it would open if someone doesn't enter www. infront of our web address. Is there a way to configure our website as suggested by Google? Thank you!
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Property http://www.xyz.com is receiving data from redundant hostnames. Some of the redundant hostnames are:
• xyz.com
• www.xyz.com
Redundant hostnames are counted as separate rows in reports, so hits that are going to the same page on your site from different hostnames will be split into multiple rows. With data split across multiple rows, traffic to specific pages will appear lower than it actually is.
To avoid this problem, consider setting up a 301 redirect from one of your redundant hostnames to the other, or create a search-and-replace filter that strips "www." from hostnames.
Google Tag Assistant Recordings can help you verify that your redirect is setup correctly, or that your filter is working as intended.
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Google gives you a good suggestion.. Just set a permanent redirect (301) on your DNS server to send traffic coming to www.xyz.com to xyz.com or vise versa
ASKER
Thank you for your quick response. I'm not too familiar with DNS settings but after some research it appears that the 301 redirect is supposed to be setup in Network Solution's DNS settings for our company. Is that correct? Thanks!
Correct, if you use Network Solutions for your DNS settings, than yes, you should set it up there
ASKER
Thank you!
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ASKER
You are correct. The problem was found to be on the webserver and not the dns server. Thanks!