One of the major pain points for webmasters with Google Search Console is the rather clunky way site owners need to verify – and check – www and non-www versions of their websites in Search Console.
Many site owners can get along fine with simply verifying a single property in Google Search Console. In fact, many don’t realize that www and non-www aren’t already merged in Search Console until they try to set a preferred domain and discover that both need to be verified.
And if there are site quality issues affecting the site, you really need to have both www and non-www versions verified so that you can see any manual actions that may have been applied to the opposite property.
Also, when a site goes secure, adding the https://www and the https non-www version of the domains means a total of 4 properties to manage. And if a site uses subdomains, then each of those added as a property just adds to the clutter.
While various Googlers have said that they realize this is a significant pain point, and dropped a few hints that this is something they are thinking about, it seems it might be getting a bit closer to reality with confirmation Google is testing this now… but there is also no date to announce yet.
@stonetemple @methode The team is aware of this feedback, and we're working on a solution for it. No date to announce though. Still testing
— Zineb Ait (@Missiz_Z) March 15, 2016
It does make sense for Google to consider www and non-www separate properties, just as they consider subdomains separate properties in Google Search Console too. But for the majority of webmasters, it is just an annoying issue to deal with, especially when something happens that requires checking all versions of the property, such as a hacked site manual action – or a legacy spam issue from a newly acquired domain – and you need to check all variations of the property.
But it is really good news to hear that it is moving closer to reality.
Jennifer Slegg
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Molly Youngblood Geiger says
Brilliant, can’t wait for this feature to roll out.