Url canonicalization: www. to http://

[Luia]

Hey there. Sorry for the simple question but I recently redesigned a site and published with WordPress,  in the process the domain structure changed from being www. to http:// .

My question is does this change affect the value we get from links pointing to the old www. domain structure?  The reason I ask is that the old site had a domain authority of 36 with OSE and a couple of hundred links but the new site address shows as having zero domain authority and zero links. Is there some best practise I should be following to retain link value?

[CleverPhD]

www is seen as a separate subdomain than non-www.  Same thing with http: vs https:  - this is why you see the drop in the domain authority.

Here are your options

1. Get your www back on.  Setup 301 redirects from the non www to the www

2. Setup 301 redirects from the www to the non www and keep the new structure

Option 1 is the better way to go with this if you can.

[Luia]

Thanks for the input cleverPhd.. I set up 301 redirects for the old site pages around 2 months ago - let's say I left things as they are, may I ask what the downside is - I mean is Google still likely to give me full credit for all those old links?

If I did get the www back on presumably it's just a few clicks in Google webmaster tools?

Thanks again.

[CleverPhD]

Supposedly over time Google will give you credit for the old site URLs to the new ones, but that is a process that I have seen take around 6 months.  It is a long process.

If you already setup 301s from the www to the non www you are now like some politicians and flip flopping on where your site is located

This is your call.  If your old URLs had been around for a long time and had a ton of link equity, then I would lean towards reverting back.  It will still take a while for Google to sort it all out, but it should work.  Short term loss, long term gain.

You have to consider links from other sites that use the old urls etc etc, things beyond Google.  Sorry not to have a simple answer.

[Luia]

Great analogy useful advice:)  thanks.

[MoosaHemani]

Yep it is different! If you prefer the new version of the URL that is non-www then i would highly recommend using 301 Redirection from www to non-www pages. And your issues will be resolved in days...

On my personal website i did the same as i prefer the www version for my site!