TOPIC:

Hi,

I have a question regarding the way my club's website URL appears in Yahoo and Bing search results.

When searching "Cincinnati Toastmasters" in Google, this is not a problem. Our club's website comes up first, with a link that goes to the correct URL (cincinnati.toastmastersclubs.org/). However, in Yahoo and Bing, "www" is added at the beginning of the URL (www.cincinnati.toastmastersclubs.org/), which causes the link to direct to the FreeToastHost home page.

I would like to either correct the links listed on Bing and Yahoo, or change the settings on the website so it will direct correctly to the Cincinnati Toastmasters website even with the "www" prefix.

Is there an option to make any of these changes? Are there any other alternatives?

Thanks,
Danna

Sorry we do not support www using the toastmastersclubs.org domain.

If you want to use www your club will need to purchase a custom domain name

I just tried looking up Cincinnati Toastmasters on Yahoo and the correct address shows (no www). I wonder if you have searched for www.cincinnati........ at some stage and have that in your cache? If so Yahoo and Bing might pick that up (I'm not sure). Try clearing your cache or try searching from a different computer and see what happens.

Pam,

I tried again, searching on computers that have never been used for Toastmasters searches, deleting cache, cookies, history, and everything the browser allows me to delete. Still the results come up as in the attached screenshot. The correct links to the site are within the sitemap (circled in green), and the main link goes to the FreeToastHost home page (circled in red). The other links go to other clubs' sites.

I tried registering the site with Bing Webmaster Tools in order to improve the test results, but it requires ownership verification. There are three verification options:
1. Downloading the BingSiteAuth.xml file and placing it in the root folder for the website, and then pointing my browser to cincinnati.toastmastersclubs.org/BingSiteAuth.xml and clicking a Verify button.
2. Adding a Meta tag to the site's header.
3. Adding a Add CNAME record to DNS.

I tried options 1 or 2, but couldn't create a page with an ending other than .html in the root folder. I also tried to add the meta tag after the Google Analytics tag, but there was not enough space in the text box in the Admin Console. I tried adding the meta tag in the home page, but that does not allow adding anything in the HEAD section of the page.

Can you suggest any way that I will be able to do one of these things in order to verify the site?

It seems that my attachment was not loaded previously, so I'm trying again.

You will need another method, we do not allow you to upload the xml file. They must offer a meta tag option.

Get the meta tag from the Bing webmaster tools, then place the meta tag directly after the google meta tag in the Website Statistics tab.

This is a stopgap measure since we do not have direct support for Bing webmaster tools right now.

Pam wrote:

I just tried looking up Cincinnati Toastmasters on Yahoo and the correct address shows (no www). I wonder if you have searched for www.cincinnati........ at some stage and have that in your cache? If so Yahoo and Bing might pick that up (I'm not sure). Try clearing your cache or try searching from a different computer and see what happens.

Probably had www in the find a club page info at some point.

Steve,

Thanks, this is helpful.

Since there is limited space in the meta tag field, I will try to replace the Google tag with the Bing tag temporarily until the site is verified.

dannab wrote:

Since there is limited space in the meta tag field,

Incorrect, it will store 300 chars as of the change I made yesterday. I have both a Google meta tag and the Bing meta tag in the same field in my club's website. (again, a stopgap measure) I made sure of this before I posted here. If you think there is limited space, you have not tried this recently.

You are well ahead of

This worked! Thanks!

Ok, I went ahead and just added a spot for a Bing/Yahoo meta tag on the Website Statistics tab.

Please put the Bing meta tag there. Now that I have that field, I am going to revert the maximum field length of the Google meta tag to the old value. I also already reverted the validation code that allowed for more than one meta tag to be put in the Google field. The next time you save anything in the Website settings you will likely get a validation error as a result.

I updated the meta tags to use the new Bing/Yahoo line. Everything was saved with no errors.

Thanks!