I have noticed that when I type www.mydomainname.com in Google, sitelinks are generated for my listing however when I simply type in mydomain.com, Google doesn't generate/show sitelinks for my site. Other sites, my competition for instance do have sitelinks generated when you type in their name without the www. What could be causing this and how do I resolve this so that I can see sitelinks without using www in front of my domain name? Omar
Have you tried logging into your webmaster's account in Google? You can set-up your preference between your site link with www or without. When building links be extra cautious on using plain www. Usually it's better to build links using the whole url.
Its because google looks at your URL with and without the "www" as different sites. To prevent this you will need to set a preferred URL using google webmaster tools and also set the appropriate 301 redirect.
you also need to increase your website authority. for example google shows sitelinks for one of my website even if I search: "my site" no matter if with www or .com or not.
you can use canonical url as well. More: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.hk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
Well when I log in to webmaster tools. I have 2 urls set up one is www.mydomain.com and the other is domain.com Is that what you mean?
Yes. Just choose the link you prefer between the two. It will reveal your links in the search results based on your preference in the webmaster tools.
No it just lists them as domains I manage. But it doesn't give me an option to select which domain takes precedence. Could you kindly give me the steps to do what you stated.
You will find all the steps you need here, https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en#44231 And as for 301 redirect, you can do it via cPanel.
So what I do was this I logged into Google Webmaster Tools clicked on one of my two domain names which was the one without the www clicked on the "nuts/bolts" looking icon Then it said set as preferred domain, I chose domain.com instead of www.domain.com Does it take some time for this change to occur so that when I now type domain.com my sitelinks will come up in the SERP in Google?
Wait a minute. I don't want to forward one domain to another . Both domains go to the same site. My issue is that, in the Search Engine Listings, when you type in my domain name with the www, Google generates and displays site links, whereas when you type my url without the www, it doesn't. So how can I fix that? Omar
You cannot doing anything with this. Google decides on for which keywords the site links should appear on the search results, it appears especially when a brand name is searched. Google will not give any control over this to an user.