Www vs non www - Crawl Error 902

[ATP]

I have just taken over admin of my company website and I have been confronted with crawl error 902 on the existing campaign that has been running for years in Moz. This seems like an intermittent problem. I have searched and tried to go over many of the other solutions and non of them seem to help.

The campaign is currently set-up with the url http://companywebsite.co.uk when I tried to do a Moz manual crawl using this URL I got an error message. I changed the link to crawl to http://www.companywebsite.co.uk and the crawl went off without a hitch and im currently waiting on the results. From testing I now know that if i go to the non-www version of my companies website then nothing happens it never loads. But if I go to the www version then it loads right away.

I know for SEO you only want 1 of these URLS so you dont have duplicate content. But i thought the non-www should redirect to the www version. Not just be completely missing.

I tried to set-up a new campaign with the defaults URL being the www version but Moz automatically changed it to the non-www version. It seems a cannot set up a new campaign with it automatically crawling the www version.

Does it sound like im out the right path to finding this cause? Or can somebody else offer up a solution?

Many thanks,
Ben

.

[Highland]

You're 100% right. You should have one 301 redirect to the other. While there are some SEO reasons for this (mainly with duplicate content), the best reason is that it's just less confusing to end users to only have one URL to use. If your non-www has trouble loading I would say you need a 301 to the www version.

Moz restricts Top Level Domain (i.e. domain.com) and crawls accordingly. I have some set up with www.domain.com and some with just domain.com. The 301 to the www forces the issue but Moz is smart enough to crawl the proper pages.

[ATP]

Thanks Highland,

How do I go about changing this? I believe its to do with the .htacess file.

The website was developed in Magento via an external company who monitor it. Looking in the root folder I can see the htaccess file but it contains a lot lines of code and rewrites that I dont fully understand.

These lines are the one I think could be relevant so far.

############################################

enable rewrites

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^companyname.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.companyname.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

Then there is lots of category pages etc that are 301 redirected

Follow by
RewriteRule ^home http://www.companyname.co.uk/ [R=301,L]

Then some more redirects for pages

I know this is specific but is this editable a different way in Magento? Thanks for any help offered i know this is getting more technical

[N1ghteyes]

You're correct, you can make it a little more generic though, without seeing all of your .htaccess file, try this:

Replace:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^companyname.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.companyname.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

With:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http%{ENV:protossl}://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

This is what could be called a wildcard redirect in that a direct copy paste should work for you with no need to edit. (you dont have to manually add in the correct domain name)

What it does:

• First it checks to see if the requested url has a www in it
• if it does -not- it then runs the rule, otherwise it ignores it.
• The rule first checks for http or https. Then adds in the www. followed by the domain and tld, finally adding the URI (/somepage/page for example).
• the L in square brakets means do not process anything else in the htaccess file
• the R=301 means that it will be a 301 (perminant) redirect.

If that still doesnt work for you, paste up your full .htaccess file, or you can send it to me directly if you'd rather and i'll take another look

[ATP]

Thanks Toby, here is the entire HTACCESS file with your fix implemented. Doesn't seem to have worked if i go to

http://atp-instrumentation.co.uk with no www it still fails to load

Edited out to shorten convo

[N1ghteyes]

Hmm ok,

before i do anything else, we need to make sure that the .htaccess file is actually being loaded. To do that, we need to break it for a second.

at the top of the htaccess file, put something like (specifics dont matter here)

THISisInValid666

What we're trying to do is put some invalid text into the htaccess file so that the site breaks when it loads. The idea being that we can confirm that the .htaccess file is actually being used. So if you put that in and the site throws a 500 error (when navigating to it with or without www) we can confirm that changes we make should work.

If the site continues to load without issue then we know that the .htaccess file isnt in use so we need to look at server configureation directly (specifically the AllowOverrides settings)

Once you have confirmed if it does / doesnt break, remove the line again

[N1ghteyes]

Just a note here, the Redirects do seem to be working, so it looks like the .htaccess file IS being loaded.

Please check anyway, its possible that the redirects are comming from another location if they have been set elseware as well. From a (very quick) look, the file seems to be formatted correctly so no obvious reason for the www redirects to not be working...

[ATP]

I added the line and it did indeed break the website, got internal service error etc

So it seems the file is working

[N1ghteyes]

Ok, so the file is working, thats a good start!

Looks like we need to go back a step in the request process then. Do you have access to the DNS settings for the http://atp-instrumentation.co.uk domain? If so, please could you check if there is an A record set for it? (looks to be registered through Civica UK Ltd - Whois Report)

What i suspect might be the case is that you're missing an A record for atp-instrumentation.co.uk but that there is one set for the www.atp-instrumentation.co.uk.

I've run a couple of tests against the domain DNS and i get nothing back for the non-www address, which is what suggests that we're not even making it as far as your servers.

To set the A record, you'll be looking for something in your control panel for 'DNS settings' or maybe 'Host Records', you should see in there ether an option to select A record settings, or perhaps a dropdown with things like A, AAA, CNAME etc. You need to:

• select 'A'
• In the domain box type: atp-instrumentation.co.uk
• In the IP box, type: 82.118.110.42

Hopefully that makes sense. If your at all unsure, let me know and i'll do what i can to help more specifically. Domain control panels are so different for each provider its difficult to provide direct instructions without knowing what your panel looks like

[ATP]

I dont have access to the DNS, my access is limited to the Magento CMS, and ftp access to the root folder.

I guess its a case of popping an email off to the guys who built the site and control the web space and getting them to address the issue?

[N1ghteyes]

In that case that would probably be the best place to start. If you want any evidence for a missing A record, heres a DNS checking tool (it currently throws an error because it can't find an A record).

MXToolBox

Let me know what they say

[ATP]

Thanks Toby, Ive emailed off, I expect a reply to be a couple of days away (what it normally take them) Thanks for the help thus far and ill message back when they do!

[ATP]

The problem was as you anticipated, after spending a few days chasing the party who actually look after it im pleased to say i checked this morning and all is working as expected.

Thanks very much for your help Toby!

[N1ghteyes]

Glad to hear thats all fixed! Though i will say thats a very slow response time for any development / hosting company typically i would expect a maximum response time of 8 hours.. We try to keep it under 2 heh.

But yes, glad thats working for you now