Preferred Domain Selection Query (Webmaster Tools)

[DavidZA1]

Hi Guys I am trying to figure out if I should display my urls with the www, without the www or select the "Don't set a preferred domain" option.

I know best practices dictates to make a selection based on what google currently have indexed and how your links are listed in your sitemap.xml file.

I must note however that I have an HTTPS site and that most of the urls are currently listed in Google as follows: https://wwww.whatever.co.za

But for some reason my sitemap is indexed as follows:

www.whatever.co.za/sitemap.xml

If somebody could maybe give me advice on this, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Dave

[SanketPatel]

Hi David,

Can you send me your URL for the analysis your problem?? Have you set canonical tag for this domain??? If site map is index without HTTPS then you should not worry it will not harm your site.

[DavidZA1]

Hi

Yes here it is:

https://www.loanfindersa.co.za

[Visiblics]

Forget about the current indexing (though it's a matter of concern), but for now you must set the preferred domain either with www. or without www (doesn't make much difference), it's all your wish.

I personally prefer without www for https sites

as far as the sitemap is concerned to it won't harm you in any which ways. once done, make sure to set the canonical URL as well to avoid any duplicate content issue

[Dr-Pete]

I feel like there are two issues here - one is whether to index "www." vs. non-www and the other is the secure/https URLs.

Every URL I see in your index, except for two (which have both been blocked by Robots.txt, apparently) is "www", so I'd stick with what's currently indexed.

I wouldn't worry about the sitemap - it's not called securely by Google, so they won't index it with https: - that's not really an issue, it's just a matter of protocol and the fact that it's a non-HTML resource.