http://www. vs. http:// and google ranking

[LdyAtavist]

I just took over a site that someone else has had up and run since 1998. A big problem that I have noticed is that if I access the page using "www." it has a PR0, but if I access it without the "www." it has a PR5. Does google see these as two different sites? Is the PR0 because it is being penalized for being duplicate content of the non "www." version of the site?

I know that in the past, most links have linked to this site using the non "www." version of the URL. I am about to do a link campaign, and would prefer using the URL with "www." in it; would I be better of sticking with the non "www." version of the URL since that is where the most links are pointing now?

[sudhani]

PR and SERPS are totally different.

http://www. or http:// should not make any difference in rankings. Onething that you might do cautiously is to stick to only of the either of the formats.

[bhartzer]

Does google see these as two different sites?

Absolutely. In fact, the following are seen as totally different, as well:

www.domain.com
domain.com
www.domain.com/index.html
domain.com/index.html

If you have links (internal or off-site) that go to both www and the non-www version, it's quite possible that you will see one PR on one and another PR on another one.

I've actually had a site that suddenly lost all its rankings due to the fact that there were "a few" links going to the non-www version of my site. Google all of a sudden had decided to index the non-www version instead of the www version (which had hundreds of links going to it).

You can also get stuck with a duplicate content penalty, as well--although this doesn't happen frequently.

To fix it (or prevent it from happening), you should have a 301 Permanent Redirect from one to the other. Since you have a higher PR on the non-www version, you would redirect the www version to the non-www version.

To prevent this from happening

[WCD]

/www.domain.com is a subset of /doman.com

I have even seen sites that will not display using www, (get redirected to another page, eg underconstruction) while they display just fine using non-www.domain.com

Therefore if google has to choice between the two, I believe they will always choose the non-www website.

The problem is, you can not use the redirect in the c/panel, since the source is fixed with the non-www.

Mike
www.failsafemonitor.com

[WCD]

I forgot:

A simple 301 Redirect would look something like:

CODE wrote:
Redirect 301 / http://www.yourdomain.com/

This would be for an apache server and added to a file called .htaccess (basically a .txt file but renamed) and located in your root directory for the site being re-routed (or rather for traffic of the site domain being re-routed).

M
www.failsafemonitor.com

[paulhiles]

Originally Posted by LdyAtavist

I know that in the past, most links have linked to this site using the non "www." version of the URL. I am about to do a link campaign, and would prefer using the URL with "www." in it; would I be better of sticking with the non "www." version of the URL since that is where the most links are pointing now?

By using the two options, i.e. both 'www' and non 'www' you're essentially splitting your PR between the two.
If you want to maintain your current PR, stick with the non 'www' address, if you'd prefer to use the www prefix, then use redirects as described above. If you're able to update/redirect the vast majority of your inbound links, it shouldn't take too long before your PR picks up.

[pedstersplanet]

Few sites I see set up a redirect (301?) to the www. if it is missed off...... hence this will transfer the PR regardless of IBL are using the www. or not.

Am I right in my theory?

[robinev]

Rather than a permanent redirect to the "www." version of my page (which is the one I prefer to use), I've set up a mod_rewrite conditions in .htaccess to create what are called "canonical hostnames" for any access to the site. (Search for that phrase and "rewrite" to find dozens of pages from folks who actually know what they're doing with this sort of thing -- a category that I don't fall into.)

Although it's longer in my file to handle more conditions, this is (I believe) the part of the rewrite that takes care of the "www":

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}     !^www\.ttca\.org
RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}     !^$
RewriteRule  ^(.*)            http://www.ttca.org/$1  [R=301,L]

The server will, as I understand it, send a permanent redirect response to any client requesting any page without "www" in the hostname and will always display the "www" version of the page.

[ghancock]

Guys, I don't quite get it, I'm sorry.

First of all domain names mean nothing to anyone but us as they are only a way for humans to locate addresses of actual machines and nothing more. Depending on what browser you use you will notice placing a website name only without the www, will cause the browser to place the www in front of it. Depending on how a domain is setup on the DNS server its possible that not putting the www in front of the domain would yield an incorrect domain which one of you mentioned above. Therefore I'd think you would always want that included.

Lastly, you can not control who links to your site nor what address they place there. So how on earth would you keep Google from splitting your PR and/or screwing this up for you. I find it hard to believe that Google would do something so stupid as we all know that both http://www and www all point to domains. What purpose would there be in breaking those two things into 2 different domains?

Sorry, I'm just trying to follow along here and I must be missing something.

Thanks,

glenn

[paulhiles]

Glenn, I agree with much of what you're saying.. that as far as visitors are concerned.. it shouldn't matter whether they type in using the 'www' prefix or not they should still arrive at your site. If a site has custom headers assigned, then this may complicate things, but on the whole.. the site should still be available.

However, for the purposes of Google assigning PR, the difference is important and visibly quite apparent.

If you visited my site and omitted the 'www' you would see PR0 for many pages, and low PR for others.. simply adding the www into the URL, you'll see a jump of 3-4 places.

I agree you can't force people to use one form or the other if they're linking to your site. But a combination of some of the above suggestions will certainly help reduce the problem of PR being split between the two addresses.

Paul

[ghancock]

Please give me an example. I choose one of your signature links... erimus.com/ as an example to test your statements. If I go to the full http address that site has a PR of 5. If I then go type in only the erimus.com/ without entering anything in front of it, the browser throws up an http:// in front of it and it has the same PR as the first full domain.

I then entered www without the http in front and the browser throws up the http:// in front of the www that I typed, so it appears that I'm not seeing what you guys are saying. Can you give me a site that proves this theory.

I understand what you are saying, just having a hard time comprehending google being this dumb. As there is no reason for them to handle this in this way except for extreme oversite...

Thanks,

glenn

[cbp]

Google is not that dumb, its USUALLY sees them all as the same page and gives them the same PR, BUT occasionally it does not recognise them as the same page and gives them different PR's (no egs to hand, but I have looked at many egs in the the past) - almost always Google works it out....eventually.

Puting up the 301 redirect from the non-www version of the URL to the www one, just makes sure it happpens.

CBP

[paulhiles]

Originally Posted by ghancock

Please give me an example.

Glenn, just try any of the site's inner pages... you'll soon see the point I'm making.

[ghancock]

Well, I don't seem to be able to. When I click the links the links take me to the full domain name with the http at the begining and both pages are displaying the same PR. I guess you've applied the processes and therefore I can't see the results. Let me try a few other sites and see what happens...

I've tried now 3 other domains and the results are the same. I still do not see the PR values changing no matter which URL I type in...

I'm sorry to be so difficult just want to understand...

glenn

[paulhiles]

Originally Posted by ghancock

I've tried now 3 other domains and the results are the same. I still do not see the PR values changing no matter which URL I type in...

Okay Glenn, I have a slightly better example for you. Try jayde.com with and without the 'www'.
PR currently shows 7 with the 'www' and zero without.

Paul

[ghancock]

Ok, so now you've provided me a very good example of the problem. However, I have one more question. How do we know the PR is different for this site, or the google toolbar PR tool just has a bug in it and is not requesting the correct URL within Google and therefore causing you to think google is viewing the pages as two different pages?

For example: Does the sites ranking in googles search results change or have two different results because of the google toolbar reporting an incorrect value?

thanks,

glenn

[WCD]

Well, jayde.com, just blew my theory that google would always pick the non-www over www.

Glenn, your question is a good one, and maybe if you figure it out, you can let us know? But if you were the owner of jayde.com would it matter even if the it had no other effect? Anotherwords, would you really want your ranking displayed as zero, especially if it occurs on your www site that most people use? check out www.webcoastdesign.com and webcoastdesign.com .

Is is pretty bad when one day you have pr7 and then the next day you have pr0. Your first reaction is, maybe I did something to get banned? Then you find out it is only that the ranking is done on non-www and not www, or vise versa.

You would think google could figure out they are the same site? Is it really possible to make them different?

Mike

[pedstersplanet]

Originally Posted by WCD

I forgot:

A simple 301 Redirect would look something like:

CODE wrote:
Redirect 301 / http://www.yourdomain.com/

This doesn't work.... I tried this and a time-out response triggered.

[Deep13]

Originally Posted by WCD

Well, jayde.com, just blew my theory that google would always pick the non-www over www.

Glenn, your question is a good one, and maybe if you figure it out, you can let us know? But if you were the owner of jayde.com would it matter even if the it had no other effect? Anotherwords, would you really want your ranking displayed as zero, especially if it occurs on your www site that most people use? check out www.webcoastdesign.com and webcoastdesign.com .

Is is pretty bad when one day you have pr7 and then the next day you have pr0. Your first reaction is, maybe I did something to get banned? Then you find out it is only that the ranking is done on non-www and not www, or vise versa.

You would think google could figure out they are the same site? Is it really possible to make them different?

Mike

I think it might be working like this..

Google will take stuff like this...

domain.com - check how many people know about the site (how many linked and all)

then www.domain.com - again check for the links and all..

so if www.domain.com has more links than domain.com then give PR to www.domain.com else domain.com

check this..

link:webcoastdesign.com - 27 pages

link:www.webcoastdesign.com - 21 pages

so webcoastdesign.com gets PR

this same problem is with our site also www.tajonline.com (PR5) and tajonline.com (PR0)

and i think this will stop happening once google knows that www.domain.com and domain.com are same..then you shall get PR same to both (like jayde.com is no PR7 for both)

btw link is just one example there might be many other reasons also.

I hope i am not wrong..

Deep

[Deep13]

Originally Posted by pedstersplanet

This doesn't work.... I tried this and a time-out response triggered.

you have to set AllowOverride All in httpd.conf

by default its AllowOverride None i suppose...

Regards
Deep

[ghancock]

Well, I'm not expecting a response but I emailed google.com about this problem. This is clearly a bug because they seem to give the site credit for links to both sites, but when it comes to the PR display on the google bar it seems to only display one or the other which is truely stupid.

There is no reason for this behavior, other than just an oversite. I'm still interested in a solution as I don't think we have it quite yet based on everyones comments.

I will post any response I get back from google here if and when I receive it...

glenn

[tobyd-mire]

i have had the same problem for at least 6 months...

http://propertyireland.net - PR5
http://www.propertyireland.net - PR3
http://propertyireland.net/index.php PR0
http://www.propertyireland.net/index.php PR0


does it really matter though as surely the higher ranking will come first in search results?

[jcopley]

You would think google could figure out they are the same site? Is it really possible to make them different?

I'm no expert on google algos, but as a webmaster I can tell you that www.copleyinternet.com and copleyinternet.com are distinct identifiers as far as DNS is concerned.

While the two URLs almost universally point the the same IP address, this is because of convention and is not a systemic feature of the Web.

Thus if I were Google, I would find it hard to justify an assumption of equivalence. As a Web marketer, I always focus all my efforts on one variation of the URL (with the www, in my case).

Regards,

Joe

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

Secure site certificates require that you put the visitor onto the exact domain the certificate was purchased for.

That means, if the certificate was purchased for yourdomain.com you cannot include any subdomains. www.yourdomain.com, pipdream.yourdomain.com and rewrite.yourdomain.com will not work.

You must clarify that the rewrite only applies to the http not the https.

I hope this helps.

[StuW]

When I first published my website, it was listed as http://bowiewebdesign.com but some of my inbound links were listed with the www. After advice given on this forum I spent a lot of time getting all links to both my sites to include the www. Now both sites have a Google PR=4 while both sites without the www. have a PR=0. Even after 6 months. No change. Google must not only see them as two different sites, but one as duplicate content. Hence the PR=0.

[DrTandem1]

Your external links should be made from the complete URL. If your site does not appear (can't be found) by anyone without the "www", then there is a problem with your host.

The reason a PR will be zero without the www is because there are no external links built that way pointing to it. This will have absolutely no bearing on where it places in the organic results. The reason is this: The domain names, top and bottom such as yourdomain.com are nothing more than an IP address. The www and the http are meaningless because Google only searchs the World Wide Web, not intranet sites. We already know that it's going to be Hyper Text Mark-up Language. That leaves us with the IP address. This will not change no matter what the user enters as a prefix, if they are on the W3.

To illustrate this, try pinging a domain with both www.yourdomain.com and simply yourdomain.com. They both ping the same IP address.

Do not confuse PR with results ranking. They are two different animals. The PR rating reflects mostly the number of relevant sites pointing towards it. The results for keyword searches depends on a number of things, but specifically the anchor text and the URL attached. So, depending on how the URL was constructed in external linking pointing to your site and how many time it appears that way, will determine the PR for that URL.

This can be proven by simply using the IP address to reach a site: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx The return most likely will be a PR of zero, as rarely is that used as a link. Go to http://www.yahoo.com and you'll see a PR of 10. However, go to their IP address and it will be a zero. Even Google itself goes from a 10 to a 9 doing this.

[firstpixel]

I have this same problem with our site also www.firstpixel.com (PR2) and firstpixel.com(PR0)

[DrTandem1]

Firstpixel-

It's not a problem. On Google you have four links pointing to the www version and no links pointing to the sans www version. It means nothing.

[Conficio]

Hey guys,
there are a lot of moving parts to this question. And Google can only do so much about it.

First, there is the DNS configuration. If you configure a domain (i.e. abc.com) you can resolve requests to a particular machine or not. This machine can be www.abc.com or not. If it is not configured some defaults kick in, which makes things even more complicated. On Windows use nslookup to have an idea how a particular host (www.abc.com) and the domain (abc.com) is configured.

Second, there is the actual web server. A web server has typically a primary DNS name and many secondary aliases. See the Apache documentation on virtual hosts for some basic insight. Usually the web server is configured to accept requests under all aliases and return always the official name. But as already mentioned in Apache this can be overwritten. As in most cases if nothing is explicitly configured, then defaults kick in. Don't know how exactly IIS works in that regard.

Third, there is the Browser behavior. Many browsers try to connect to a web server (via http protocol) as asked to do. But if they do not succeed, they also try to do convenience requests under such things like adding a www. as prefix, if not present already. Again a lot of default behavior.

The bottom line is you have to investigate how exactly the particular domain is configured and how your web hosting company sets up their default host configuration.

If the DNS points to the same IP and the webserver does return one of the two names as the default Virtual Host, then this is what a search engine like Google will likely pick as the URL to store for the pages. However, I'm not sure if they will rewrite URLs that point to the other variant. They should not ban a site as a duplicate, as they know it is the same site and two sites (one duplicate) does not bother them at all. There is no redirect or URL rewrite necessary in this scenario!

But if the domain abc.com and www.abc.com resolve to different IP addresses (even if they are the same machine), then it is likely that the search engines will store both sets of pages and they can't do much about it. A 301 - permanent redirect might be a good solution then. Or better fix this unintended DNS behavior and make sure your webserver does not respond to every call in the syntax of the alias.

I hope that shed some light on the issues here.

Good luck

K<o>

[WCD]

At first I thought Deep was on the right track when he is referring to www.webcoastdesign.com. But one thing I noticed when I looked at

link:webcoastdesign.com - 27 pages

link:www.webcoastdesign.com - 21 pages

All the 27 links going to webcoastdesign.com are just internal page links, so why are they even being counted as links?

Also this does not explain the sites that have rankings on www and not non-www? Anotherwords, why do most websites have the same rankings on both sites, but some sites do not?

DrTandem1 "The reason a PR will be zero without the www is because there are no external links built that way pointing to it." Does this mean every site that does have a PR value other than zero has external links point to it? This very well may be true and should be easy to change.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?
Dr Tamdem1 "Do not confuse PR with results ranking. They are two different animals. The PR rating reflects mostly the number of relevant sites pointing towards it. The results for keyword searches depends on a number of things, but specifically the anchor text and the URL attached. So, depending on how the URL was constructed in external linking pointing to your site and how many time it appears that way, will determine the PR for that URL."
If this were true, then webcoastdesign.com has made a nice discovery: With just 27 internal links pointing to itself it has managed to get a PR6 ranking.

Although Glenn may be right that there is no reason for this behavior, other then just an oversite, there maybe some specific reason, which has not be adequately explained yet.

As Joe pointed out the ip addresses can be different on www vs non-www, when they are the same, how likely will the two sites be different? and is this the issue with the sites that have been mentioned?

Another question:
"does it really matter though as surely the higher ranking will come first in search results?"

Although ranking is most important, I for one do not want visitors to see PR0 if I have a PR ranking of PR7.

Mike

[Deep13]

well I think this problem is kind of temporary i.e. once googles figures out that domain.com and www.domain.com are same then it should give same PR to both...

Deep

[DrTandem1]

WCD, I think you are missing the larger point that PR is actually irrelevant (in and of itself) to search result ranking. For instance, there are many sites in the top spots that have low PRs. If this were not true, then all of the top results would be high PR ranking sites.

Again, PR and result ranking have little to do with one another. People put too much weight into PR. It is a red herring tossed out by Google. Nothing but chaff. You are welcome to chase it.

[Rajeev Ranjan Singh]

hi

just take the example of business.com
google has banned business.com
so allways use www.yourdomain.com

[Deep13]

Originally Posted by Rajeev Ranjan Singh

hi

just take the example of business.com
google has banned business.com
so allways use www.yourdomain.com

well thats not anywhere related to the topic we are discussing :)

take care
Deep

[johntang]

Lets approach this topic with a simple comparison:

How many people publish two or more addresses to the same location where you can be found?

This issue is a lack of Internet development. The same as any village, town, city, state or nation refusing to establish good addressing principals for their buildings and streets.

[WCD]

Initially, I thought this would be an easy question to answer and someone would easily provide the answer. I had know idea it was going to take a lot of investigation and reseach to figure out what google is doing?

To my surprise no one has been able to answer the question, yet. Are we down to: I dont know the answer and it is not important anyway, so we should just forget it?

Conficio, I think, did the best job in trying to point out that there maybe too many factors to ever know exactly why this happens.

I can accept that, but if anyone really knows the answer, I would still be interested to know what is happening?

In particular why Google ranks PR differently for www vs non-www for only some sites?

Especially when the sites have the same IP addresses and apprear to be identical in all other respects? After all, even one of the most extensive website, yahoo has no problem being ranked P10 with or without www. Speaking of yahoo, if you type in yahoo.com, you will get www.yahoo.com

Mike

[solohelp]

www.google.com Is Not the same as google.com in the same way that toolbar.google.com Is Not the same as google.com. It looks like the same thing because IIS and Apache are setup to automatically deal with www. www is a subdomain.

So PR should be different on www.google.com and google.com they are different domains. If you dont set up the redirects google will see them as 2 seperate domains.

Anybody have the history on www? It seems like a complete waste. What was the original purpose?



BTW: I've spent the last 5 hours reading threads here. Great Forum, you'll see me around.

[macdesign]

Very interesting. I have one of my desktop bookmarks pointing to a fairly new site, and had used the URL without the www. - the PR showed at 0, now I changed it to www. and have the nice surprise of a PR of 5 already.

I checked a lot of my sites, and all of them except one show a PR of 0 without the www. - I've always taken the trouble to put in the www. on all links and sites submissions.

However one site, that's I've had around for years shows a PR of 5 for both versions, so I've no idea why.

[uioreanu]

There's a simple yet powerful PHP fix to the duplicated www.domain.com -> domain.com content problem on php9

http://www.php9.com/index.php?p=12

I wonder why everybody is talking about this these days

[MathsIsFun]

OK, well having read all this, it seems to me that it is best to always use www

And if someone could confirm the best way to do a redirect, that would be good.

But how about www._.com vs www._.com/index.htm

Internally I link to the home page as www._.com/index.htm, but external links are www._.com style

Should I change all my internal links to the homepage to www._.com ?

And what of the difference between www._.com/ and www._.com (ie with or without the /)

[robinev]

Originally Posted by MarketList

And what of the difference between www._.com/ and www._.com (ie with or without the /)

They're the same.

The listing without "/" is technically incorrect, but so common that it is fixed by virtually all servers. Some link checkers will flag a reference to a directory that doesn't include the trailing slash, but you're unlikely to run into a server that doesn't treat the references as identical.

[Conficio]

Originally Posted by robinev

They're the same.

The listing without "/" is technically incorrect, but so common that it is fixed by virtually all servers. Some link checkers will flag a reference to a directory that doesn't include the trailing slash, but you're unlikely to run into a server that doesn't treat the references as identical.

I would have to say that is only half the truth.

I believe www._.com is technically not a URL, but as stated it is corrected in some of the players in the chain.

A URL ending with a "/" is a call for a directory listing. Most web-servers are either programmed to list the content of the directory or they are send to a default-index page (usually index.html).

A URL not ending in a "/" is a URL for a file (or any other script that returns a file content like stream). This is true if it ends in ".html", ".php" or not. For example www._.com/happy is a request that might be equivalent to www._.com/happy.html. But www._.com/happy/ is a request to a directory listing. The practically best system is to actually avoid all "file-"extensions. Because it allows you to change your technology from *.html (plain html files) to *.shtml (Server Side Includes - SSI), to *.php or *.jsp or *.pl without changing all your URL's and having to redirect them later on.

Regarding the best way to do a redirect? There is no universal answer, because it depends much on the powers you have over your web-server. Some can only add scripts or Meta redirects (because they are hosted at free - or thrown in to the service - kind of web-servers). Others can influence the .htaccess or use *.php or perl to do the trick (because they have more or less full fledged web-hosting services). And the last group has full control over the virtual host configuration and the DNS, because they have a virtual or dedicated server (or host from home).

and I didn't try to say that it is impossible to figure out, what is your case, but it is more time and resources I can spare to solve your puzzle. And in general there are too many moving parts in combination to figure out. So my strategy would be to do a solid solution that covers most bases and stop worrying about it.

K<o>

[LinkMaster]

Originally Posted by WCD

To my surprise no one has been able to answer the question, yet.

Here is the answer. Google sees http://www.your-domain.com as a completely different domain than http://your-domain.com, just as it would see http://forums.your-domain.com as a different domain. That's because they are different domains.

Might I add that IP addresses change a lot? Google is going to index the domain name and not the IP address. What if someone changes web hosts? Do they lose their PR? No.

Hope this helps clear things up a bit.

[volastyle]

-deleted.

[poolpartsetc]

take a look at the top search engines...

if you type yahoo.com, msn.com, google.com etc. you will be redirected to the www. version.

if you type webproworld.com you will go to webproworld.com.

i would definately use the www. version of the site

[effisk]

this thread is very interesting.

This problem raised my attention a couple of days ago with the following site:

http://kitesurf.fr and

http://www.kitesurf.fr

The toolbar PR is currently 0 for both addresses because the site is fairly new (a couple of months), but I realized that when you browse starting from either addresses, it remains the same in the address bar (either http.kite... or http://www.kite... ), and you have a 'double content' for the whole site; it made me wonder what Google would make of this.

Now I have the answer.

I have an additional question though...

see the results for:

google search: link:http://www.specialchem.com

google search: link:http://specialchem.com

You will notice that the results are the same, but both http://www.specialchem.com and http://specialchem.com exist (same content, no redirection...). It seems that google makes no difference here.

[DesignsOnline]

Hello,
I have a situation along these lines which I dont understand.

In google I have a PR 4 for the following:
http://www.designsonline.co.uk
http://designsonline.co.uk
http://www.designsonline.co.uk/
http://designsonline.co.uk/
http://www.designsonline.co.uk/index.html

But I sometimes get a PR 0 for:
http://designsonline.co.uk/index.html

To the best of my knowledge all my backlinks point to http://www.designsonline.co.uk

Yet Google have just changed my listing from http://www.designsonline.co.uk to http://designsonline.co.uk

Why is this, will it affect my PR or SERPs and what if anything can I do about it?

I am worried because I have very low backlinks anyway as I only recently learned that I needed them, I am now trading PR4+ links as fast as I can with everyone who wants to trade. But all the links I have point to http://www.designsonline.co.uk will I lose position and or PR now the Google have changed my listing?

[paulhiles]

Why do you think Google is using your domain name without the "www"?
A Google search for Website Design Southend on Sea, returned your site at #14 and the site domain was displayed with the "www".

Anyway, with eleven links in your post above, that may boost your rankings for both variations! ;o)

[wednesday]

How about using images ../img/img.gif
Does this bothers google?