Duplicate Page Content for www and non-www. Help!

[QRate]

Hi guys, having a bit of a tough time here...

MOZ is reporting duplicate content for 21 pages on eagleplumbing.co.nz, however the reported duplicate is the www version of the page.

For example: http://eagleplumbing.co.nz and http://www.eagleplumbing.co.nz are considered duplicates (see screenshot attached)

Currently in search console I have just updated the non-www version to be set as the preferred version (I changed this back and forth twice today because I am confused!!!).

Does anyone know what the correct course of action should be in this case?

Things I have considered doing include: changing the preferred version to the www version in webmaster tools, setting up 301 redirects using a wordpress plugin called Eggplant 301 redirects.

I have been doing some really awesome content creation and have created some good quality citations, so I think this is only thing that is eaffecting my rank.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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[DennisSeymour]

Hi!

Pick one of them. Probably the non-www version as that's the indexed one in Google

Next, 301 the www to non-www.

Wordpress handles that flawlessly so Im not sure why its not redirecting you correctly. Maybe check your Settings->General or check your htaccess if something changed.

It should always redirect.

That should fix your issue so you can continue with the other important stuff that you are doing.

[QRate]

Thanks DennisSeymour,

what should I be looking for in the Settings>General?

[QRate]

So I set up 301 ...and it took the site down saying it has caused a redirect loop. Not good.

Anyone else got any good ideas?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Andrew,

You need to be editing your .htaccess file to forward from one to another if Wordpress isn't getting it right.

In the Wordpress General Settings, just make sure that both URL's are set to your preferred version (www or non-www) and if this doesn't work, a bit of .htaccess code will cure it for you.

Add this to your .htaccess if required:

<code>RewriteEngineOn RewriteBase/ RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST}^www\.(.*)$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

-Andy</code>

[QRate]

Awesome thanks for the tip Andy, but I think I may have found the issue.

There were multiple Google Search Console accounts set up and running, creating two instances of the same site! I had access to one of them but when consulting the client I discovered that we were looking at different data, and hence my need for some explanation.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Ahh great stuff. Glad you managed to track it down

-Andy