A crawl revealed two home pages

[Tom3_15]

After doing a site crawl using the moz tool, I have found two home pages-www.domain.com/ and www.domain.com. Both URLS have the exact same metrics and I have set a preferred domain name in google, will this hurt seo? Should I claim the www.domain.com/ as well as www.domain.com and domain.com in the search console?

Thanks

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Profitect

These are two separate home pages and duplicate each other so do have the potential to kill all of your SEO efforts as they are seen as separate pages by Google.

You will need to put a directive in the htaccess file to move all traffic to one of the other. It's a two-minute job for a developer.

This would move all URL's to a trailing sash format. (Assuming the site is https)

 <code><ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on

    RewriteBase /

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$

    #Force Trailing slash

    RewriteRule ^((.*)[^/])$ $1/ [L,R=301]</ifmodule></code> 

Regards

Nigel

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

In addition to what Nigel is suggesting I would also recommend to claim www.example.com and example.com, if you used to have a HTTP site and have moved over the last years to HTTPS I would recommend using that to verify as well. All of this gives you the best insight.

This is only worth fixing as it's usually an easy change that needs to be made, right now it won't hurt you as there are so many other issues that have way more weight for a search engine. This particular one is one that millions of sites have.

[Tom3_15]

We are currently HTTP, however the page domain.com/ seems to redirect to domain.com, as I can not access domain.com/ without it bringing me to domain.com (sorry for the redundancy). However, the moz crawl did not reveal a 301. Does this resolve the duplicate content issue? Thanks for the fast answers.

-So far www and non www have been claimed only.

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Tom

Moz will not reveal a 301 unless there is a nasty redirect chain. If you use Screaming Frog it will reveal all the directives for every page.

There must be a redirect but it might be worth checking if it's a 301 (permanent) or 302  (temporary) - it should be 301.

The good news is that it is redirecting.

As Martijn suggests you should add the preferred one to Search Console. It doesn't 'do' anything but you will be able to see both versions.

Regards Nigel

[Tom3_15]

Thank you for the fast responses.

Currently, "www.domain.com/" has been claimed and set as preferred, all search console data appears on this account. (www and backslash)

"domain.com/" has also been claimed, with no data on this view.---(non www)

However, as stated, "www.domain.com/" (Preferred and with backslash)  redirects to www.domain.com. So as per suggestions I should add "www.domain.com", should this now be my preferred domain?

Thanks guys!

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Tom

If it redirects to www.domain.com then that must also be set up in GSC as that is now the preferred domain format. It looks better as well without the trailing slash.

Regards

Nigel

[Tom3_15]

Thanks Nigel, what will happen to the existing data under the view of the current preferred domain with the backslash if I switch the preferred domain to no backslash? I worry that the existing data will be erased or not transferred.

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Tom

It will still be there but will slowly decline as the new format one takes over. You won't lose anything, GSC just tracks. You will see the non-trailing slash data begin to populate over the next few weeks.

Regards

Nigel

[Tom3_15]

Thanks Niglel, after doing a little investigating, I believe google search console may have added in the backslash for formatting reasons. It appears with a backslash in home view, where you can see domains, however when viewing preferred domain, it does not appear with a backslash. To test this I used a practice site and added it in without a backslash, following my submission google added in a backslash under the domain view.

So I should be set?

Thanks!

[Nigel_Carr]

Just double check in a clean browser (with history cleared & F5) or in incognito mode to check the default.

Sounds good Tom!

[Tom3_15]

you guys are awesome! Thank you.