Rainy Day Reads

Due to the nasty weather on both coasts, I thought you may be looking for some interesting reading. Here are some good threads. You can thank me later.

Search Engine Roundtable points to an interesting thread regarding the canonicalization issues that will supposedly be addressed by Bigdaddy. A user chooses Matt Cutts blog to highlight the problem that arises when you find yourself with two different versions of your site: a www site and a non-www site.

“Mattcutts.com/blog/2005/10/ is not indexed under the non-www and if you query all the DCs you will see that it references the www on a “mattcutts.com/blog/2005/10/” search as the page.

So you would probably think that the Canonicalization process is working correctly – and we would assume that Google thinks that mattcutts.com/blog/2005/10/ is the same page as www.mattcutts.com/blog/2005/10/.

But if you do a PR check on the non-www and the www pages you will start to see that they are in fact split – the non-www has no PR while the www has PR across the DCs.”

All hail the power of the mighty 301 direct. While Matt’s site, which was intentionally set up as a case study for canonical problems, has survived the site split just fine, (undoubtedly because of all his inbound links. You’re welcome Matt) many sites may not be so lucky. Sites with www and non-www pages may find their site split in half, appearing as separate sites to Google and leading to all kinds of duplicate content issues.

Site owners beware: If you have moved your site and have not properly used your 301 redirect, your site could be in trouble. You run the risk of losing all your page rankings and getting penalized for duplicate content. We suggest you check your server headers.

And speaking of Matt Cutts, sparked by his little April Fools Day prank with Jeremy, an interesting thread on WebmasterWorld tackles what exactly Google would do if he were to leave for real. The idea is too heart wrenching for me to even think about so I will merely direct you to the discussion.

Lastly, and perhaps the most entertaining, BoingBoing points to an interesting Yafla.com article written by Dennis Forbes. The article entitled, Interesting Facts about Domain Names, is a fun look at what domain names are being registered (like every possible two-letter combination) and which ones are still available.

The article includes some very interesting and amusing morsels of information. For example, did you know the most popular registered (registered, not necessarily used) domain length is eleven characters long, but that 538 domains are more than 60 characters? (Including one that repeats the word ‘web’ more than twenty times!) Or that 143,683 domains include the word ‘love’. Do you know what the most common letter to start a domain name off with is? Or what the most common digit to start one is? Well, I’m not telling you. You’re going to have to go read the article for yourself

That should keep you busy for awhile.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.