Website Grader Report - Permanent Redirect Not Found

[merkal2005]

Have you ever checked HubSpot's website grader at www.websitegrader.com? I usually notice that the tool gives an error namely "Permanent Redirect Not Found" with below explanation:

"Search engines may think www.example.com and example.com are two different sites.You should set up a permanent redirect (technically called a "301 redirect") between these sites. Once you do that, you will get full search engine credit for your work on these sites. :(Website Grader)

Can we trust this tool?

[RyanKent]

It is very easy to confirm whether the tool is working correctly or not.

Visit the site in question, then add or remove the "www." portion of the URL. A properly redirected site should adjust and only appear using a common URL. For example, the SEOmoz site uses the www subdomain. Try removing the "www." prefix and you will see the redirect happen where the "www." subdomain is automatically re-added. That is the correct behavior. If that change is not happening on the site in question, it should be fixed.

[merkal2005]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the answer. My question was not so clear; I wonder how can we verify whether this has a negative SEO effect where there are hundreds of thousands websites in similar situation?

[RyanKent]

I can definitely confirm this issue has a negative impact on SEO.

Let's use "mysite.com" as the root site. In this example "www.mysite.com" is a sub-domain. It's statistics such as Domain Authority are gathered independently of the "mysite.com" root domain.

If you want to see an example, try the wordpress.com site. You can create your own subdomain (subject to availability) on the wordpress.com domain. Try making Stradiji.wordpress.com. You will notice your DA starts off at zero. It is a different subdomain. In this same manner, the "www." and root domain are different sites.

I hope this makes sense.

[merkal2005]

Definitely makes sense Ryan. Thank you so much!

One more question; there is settings under Google Webmaster Tools, where you can set www.example.com or example.com. After we have done permanent (301) redirection to one of the versions, we should adjust settings in Google Webmaster Tools as well, right?

[RyanKent]

You are certainly welcome to set your preferred domain in Google WMT but it is not required to do such if you have your permanent redirection properly in place.

[merkal2005]

Thanks Ryan, appreciated!