Is my site live on more than one web address?
Worth a look
Your site probably answers to several addresses: with and without www, with and without https, perhaps an old domain from a rebrand. Ideally all but one of those permanently redirects to the one you've chosen. When they don't, search engines see several copies of the same site and have to guess which is the real one.
Why this happens to almost everyone
Addresses accumulate. A business registers the .com and the .co.uk. It rebrands and keeps the old domain pointed at the site. Someone sets up www and non-www both working, because it seems friendlier. Then https arrives and now there are four combinations of everything.
None of this is a mistake exactly — it's what happens when nobody has been asked to choose. The choosing is the work.
What it costs you
Search engines try to work out which address is the real one, and they're usually right — but “usually” is doing real work in that sentence. When they get it wrong you can find the wrong domain in results, or the credit from links to your site divided between two versions instead of concentrated on one.
It also makes your own measurement unreliable: analytics split across addresses, and links that work for you but not for the customer you sent them to.
The canonical tag is the standard way to declare your preference, and it's worth checking it actually points where you think. A canonical tag pointing at a staging domain, or at the developer's example address, is a surprisingly common leftover — and it tells Google, in the clearest terms available, to list somebody else's address instead of yours.
Choosing, then enforcing
Pick one — https, and either with www or without, it genuinely doesn't matter which. Consistency is the whole benefit.
Every other address should return a permanent redirect to the matching page on the chosen one. Every page's canonical tag should name the chosen address. Your sitemap should list only the chosen address.
If you own a domain from a previous name, keep it and keep it redirecting. Letting it lapse hands your old links, and anyone who typo-guesses your old name, to whoever registers it next.
How to check this yourself
- Try all four in turn: http://yoursite.co.uk, http://www.yoursite.co.uk, https://yoursite.co.uk and https://www.yoursite.co.uk.
- Each should end up at the same single address in the bar. If two of them stay put and both show your site, you have duplicates live.
- Do the same for any old domain you still own.
- Right-click a page, choose “View page source”, search for “canonical”, and check the address it names is the one you chose — and is your domain at all.
What to ask your web person
Copy this. It's phrased so you don't have to know the jargon to ask for the right thing.
Could you make sure we have one canonical address — https and a consistent choice on www — with every other variant permanently redirecting to the matching page? And could you check the canonical tags point at our live domain rather than a staging or template address?
Want to know if this applies to your site?
Gus checks this and everything else in the free check-up, then explains what he found in plain English. It's free, there's no account, and it takes about a minute.