Best Practice - Disavow tool for non-canonical domain, 301 Redirect

[thebenro]

The Situation:

We submitted to the Disavow tool for a client who (we think) had an algorithmic penalty because of their backlink profile. However, their domain is non-canonical. We only had access to http://clientswebsite.com in Webmaster Tools, so we only submitted the disavow.txt for that domain. Also, we have been recommending (for months - pre disavow) they redirect from http://clientswebsite.com to http://www.clientswebsite.com, but aren't sure how to move forward because of the already submitted disavow for the non-www site.

1.) If we redirect to www. will the submitted disavow transfer or follow the redirect?

2.) If not, can we simply re-submit the disavow for the www. domain before or after we redirect?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi,

I haven't actually done this myself, but the best way to handle it is after the move and the www-version of the site has been verified in GWT, just check to see if the disavow file exists there. If it doesn't just re-add it.

The fact that you are redirecting from a non-www to www, means that your disavow document will still be fine to use, as it applies to the new site too.

-Andy