Which Google Search Console Property Type?
This post is mainly about setting up Google Search Console for use with the Google Disavow Links tool. Hubspot has already written quite a comprehensive article about setting up Google Search Console here.
If you are setting up a new domain in Google Search Console you will need to go here and choose a property type:
Which one should you choose?
- If you never intend to use the Google Disavow Links Tool use the Domain property type
- If you are going to use the Google Disavow Links Tool use the URL Prefix type
Why is this? It is because Google has not introduced the Disavow Links Tool into the newer Domain property type. We don’t know if this is something they will do in the future, but for now, you will need to use the URL Prefix property type.
If I use the URL Prefix property type, which variation/s should I use?
If your main domain variation is https://www.example.com then you must set up the https://www variation. This is because this is usually the only place where you will see your link and traffic data.
However, we suggest that you set up:
- https://www.example.com
- http://www.example.com
- https://example.com
- http://example.com
- https://anysubdomainyouhave.example.com
- http://anysubdomainyouhave.example.com
Is that really necessary? Possibly not, but what we have found is that when we are clearing Google Manual Actions, we have considerably more success in getting the penalty revoked if we send the Disavow File to all available domain variations.
We can only assume that this is because the Disavow Links tool is not as clever as Google would have us believe.
For example, if your domain is now https://www.example.com but in the past it was http://www.example.com you may have old links linking to http://www.example.com. If you want to disavow those old links, we think that it may help if the disavow file is uploaded in the http://www.example.com as well as the https://www.example.com version.
We don’t know if this is definitely what has to be done, but for the extra few minutes of effort, we think it is worth covering all possibilities.
If any Google representatives are reading this and are able to clarify the situation with the Google Disavow Links Tool and Google Search Console variations, please get in touch we would love to hear from you.