Hi everybody, I have a small website ( 22 pages). Until now ( two months) google used to index the "domain.com" version and not the" www.domain.com" version. today I logged on to webmaster tools and change it to preferred domain - "www.domain.com" version. I have two questions : 1. Does it hurt my SERP? 2. how long does it take for the changes to take affect? 3. all the backlinks I created pointing to the "www.domain.com" . ever since the indexed domain in google currently is "domain.com" , I guess currently my backlinks have no affect on page rank. Is it going to change once google gonna change the indexed pages to be "www.domain" version? Thank you very much for your help.
I recommend setting up a .htaccess redirect from your non-www pages to your www version. This ensures that Google has no problem differentiating between the two versions. I don't really know how well that Google webmaster tool option works. I assume it was designed to eliminate the need for the .htaccess redirect. I would think it would take effect quite quickly (when Google crawls your website next). I doubt it would hurt your rankings. If it did, it would likely just be temporary. Changing this option definitely won't have any kind of immediate effect on your PageRank. It would be interesting to see if your PR goes up on the next PR update.
Search engines may think www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com are two different sites so deciding a preferred domain will help your SEO rankings. Changes should take affect quickly. To do it even quicker I would recommend setting a permanent redirect on your site domain and then update your sitemap and update it to Google Webmaster Tools. Once you do that, you will get full search engine credit for your work on these sites and it will improve your search engine optimization and the SEO rankings. If you need help on how to setup the permanent redirect please check this http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/how-...permanent-redirect-to-optimize-your-blog-seo/ I hope this helps.