http://domain vs. http://www.domain...same or different?

[web-content-king]

OK, I've asked this before and never gotten an opinion:

For purposes of SERPs and for PageRank, does Google see http://www.yoursite... to be the same as http://yoursite...

I know that the two can have different PR. But it would blow my mind if the two really were treatedly separately in determining rankings. After all, natural links will be split about evenly between http:// and http://www... If a site has only http://... going into it I'd think that would be a dead giveaway that the links are artificial.

What is a good way to approach this from a practical standpoint?

[minstrel]

They are different. It seems to me that at least in the past SEs would eventually resolve the two forms to the same URL but I'm no longer certain of that.

The best way to "handle the situation" is to be as consistent as possible in your internal and external linking, with a strong preference to the www version.

[web-content-king]

Originally Posted by minstrel

They are different. It seems to me that at least in the past SEs would eventually resolve the two forms to the same URL but I'm no longer certain of that.

The best way to "handle the situation" is to be as consistent as possible in your internal and external linking, with a strong preference to the www version.

Thanks for the thought.

1) Why are you no longer certain they are resolving the two? It would seem to be technically easy to see that the content on the two is identical.

2) Wouldn't having all your links going to http://www... be a dead giveaway that they're artificial?

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by web-content-king

1) Why are you no longer certain they are resolving the two? It would seem to be technically easy to see that the content on the two is identical.

2) Wouldn't having all your links going to http://www... be a dead giveaway that they're artificial?

1) I think eventually they should be recognized as duplicate content and at that point one should be discounted. However, that doesn't mean that any PR accruing to the discounted form will be transferred. That's probably a primary reason for many webmasters to use permanent redirects or mod_rewrite to funnel both forms into one.

2) To start with, I'm not sure why you'd think that -- I probably type http:// before a URL automatically at least half the time... In addition, I'm not sure why you're worrying about "artificial" but I assume it's in contrast to "organic". All Google can do is recognize links (and their relevance to page content) so there would be know way of distinguishing between a "natural" or "organic" link and an "artificial" or "arranged" one.

[web-content-king]

>>>That's probably a primary reason for many webmasters to use permanent redirects or mod_rewrite to funnel both forms into one.

Is this the method you use? Any potential pitfalls with this method?

As for your second point about Google not being able to distinguish natural links from artificial links, what makes you say that?

There's so much talk today about "dampening filters" for new links, links with words such as "sponsored" over them, links with all the same anchor text, etc. etc., that it would seem logical to check whether a site has nearly all its links in one format or the other with regards to http:// and http://www... If all a site's links are in one format, it's almost impossible they occurred naturally, since people naturally put links in either one format or the other, without a clear preference; www... may be what is most recommended but http:// is just faster to type.

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by web-content-king

>>>That's probably a primary reason for many webmasters to use permanent redirects or mod_rewrite to funnel both forms into one.

Is this the method you use? Any potential pitfalls with this method?

Truthfully, I don't worry much about it. I use the www version for all internal links and most of my backlinks are also in that format. My sites are mostly well-established ones so it's not a major issue for me. But I expect the mod_rewrite is the most effective method if your server allows that.

As for your second point about Google not being able to distinguish natural links from artificial links, what makes you say that?

There's so much talk today about "dampening filters" for new links, links with words such as "sponsored" over them, links with all the same anchor text, etc. etc., that it would seem logical to check whether a site has nearly all its links in one format or the other with regards to http:// and http://www... If all a site's links are in one format, it's almost impossible they occurred naturally, since people naturally put links in either one format or the other, without a clear preference; www... may be what is most recommended but http:// is just faster to type.

Acxtually, the fastest and easiest to type is www.domain.com without the http:// and that's how most people will type it, if they type it at all.

As for the other points, yes there's a lot of talk about a lot of things, most of it based on hysteria and mythology rather than any real evidence. If you focus on linking to sites your visitors will find useful and requesting but not requiring return links from relevant sites, I think you can safely forget about pretty much all of the rest of the hype and worry-warting.