Http & www: Google's SEO results

[Rick_001]

Hi,
My client's website has around 50 web pages. All the web pages have been indexed by Google. In most of the web pages, when I type the url of the page on Google, the indexed url of the web page gets displayed as a search result. For an example,

when I type - http://www.abc.com/xyz.htm , the search result comes up as www.abc.com/xyz.htm
Similarly, when I type- www.abc.com/xyz.htm, the search result comes up as www.abc.com/xyz.htm

This is perfectly fine. But for some other web pages, the search result varies.

Like, when I type- http://www.abc.com/pqr.htm, the search result comes up as "No result found"
But, when I type - www.abc.com/pqr.htm, the search result comes up as www.abc.com/pqr.htm

Taking all these things into account, I have some queries as follows:

1. Why there is discrepancy between http and www?
2. If it is there, how to fix it?
3. Any brief idea about http and www and how they influence the SEO?
4. It is possible that a site without having www, like http://mnc.com, will be picked up by Google

Hope, although it (queries) looks very silly, I will be grateful if I get a positive response.

Thanks in advance,
Rick

[SemAdvance]

1. Known as a Canonical URL issue. One is a relative URL and one is the Absolute URL (http://www.yourdomain.com). Google sees all different forms of a URL as separate sites. IE. www. - http:// - http : //www (spaces added to stop hyperlinking)

When this happens it dilutes your PageRank since the PR is spread to our various canonical URLs

2. Yes depending on server Unix box = Apache Mod Rewrite Windoze = Isapi

3. See # 1 Answer above

4. Yes Google will index various URL forms of your site.

:->

[wesleyw]

Are you talking about the way the title is listed in the SERPs or the URL that is appearing under the page description?

[a53mp]

When you create links internally and externally, you should keep them consistent.

Either all like http://www.site.com or http://site.com etc

It is better to use www.

You should use htaccess to redirect all non-www traffic to www.

[incrediblehelp]

So are you saying some pages are just not indexed? If you dont have links pointing to the pages there would be nothing unusual about that. Can you post some real examples?

[wige]

1. There is a difference between http and not http because of the way the search engine parses the keywords you enter to search. Basically, "http://" contains special characters (: and /) which confuses the search engine. The colon is used for denoting special types of searches, such as link: allinurl: and site:. The slash has other uses of its own. When entering a domain to do a search, do not add http:// at the beginning. You will get wonky results (although sometimes the search engine will simply ask "Did you want to go to <link>?").

2. Don't enter http://. It won't do what you are expecting it to do. If you need to filter results based on protocol, use the appropriate option in the advanced search page. Do not enter the protocol into the search box.

3. http:// is not considered as part of the URL for search purposes. having a www. or not is important on the other hand, but that is a separate issue.

4. Sites without www will be indexed just fine. Again, it is possible for two versions of the same site to be indexed, one with and one without the www subdomain. This is called canonicalization, and someone wrote an article about preventing it, which is on this forum here: Canonicalization Prevention Guide

[Keimos]

Hi Rick, https is different as that is regraded as secure pages, www or no www needs to be registered with your host in your domain settings, it is that easy. then both will be indexed. keimos