Canonicalization question

Im new to SEO and learning slowly...very slowly

I was hoping to get some info on canonicalization. I have a website that is fairly new.

I have been backlinking over the last couple of months using the url without www

The url without www has almost 100 indexed pages the url with www has 4 indexed pages. I recently decided use the process of canonicalization and my webmaster used the www as the preferred which has less indexed.

Was the this the correct and preferred url or should i stick with the www which is the current or does it not matter after you complete this process.

Im hoping google recognizes both urls as one so they combine the indexed pages

help would be greatly appreciated

You'll be just fine. While it would have been better to use the URL's that have better indexation, it really doesn't matter. Google will find all of your pages. Canonicalization actually works fairly quickly in my experience. I would check in a couple days and you should see the correct indexation. They will index the www url's since that's what your webmaster canonicalized to. I would make sure your XML sitemap has all of the www urls in it though for sure, that will speed it up a bit.

Practically, both the versions are good. I would suggest you set up a redirect from www domain to non-www domain, since you have more indexed pages on non-www domain.

Also, set your preferred version in Google webmaster tools.

I would also suggest to use the non-www version, just remember to redirect the traffic from www

But relax, that's a small amount of links to even make a huge difference, so, if you prefer to stay with www, stay...

So you all know the word canonicalization but all have little understanding of it
IT CAN NOT BE FIXED IN GOOGLES WEBMASTERS TOOLS
So read up on it untill you understand it

*zap* said:

So you all know the word canonicalization but all have little understanding of it
IT CAN NOT BE FIXED IN GOOGLES WEBMASTERS TOOLS
So read up on it untill you understand it

Click to expand...

seriously dude? You want to come in here and trash people for making suggestions? Only ONE person recommended specifying the correct url's in Webmaster Tools. This suggestion came AFTER recommending setting up the redirects. This user's suggestion was probably the most complete and best suggestion! The fact is you CAN fix indexing issues in Google that are caused by non canonical URLs. But you're correct, Webmaster Tools ALONE will not fix the issue.

Note to everyone who posted, the OP said the redirects had already been made to the www url versions. While it's okay to reverse those and point to non-www url's it's not necessary. The OP's original question was "is this a problem?" The answer is "no, it's not a problem. Either version is fine."

OP, make sure you also handle the file extension...for example www.domain.com/index.html and www.domain.com. It's possible you only fixed the www issue with canonicalization. MANY webmasters overlook the file extensions.