www or not?

[Dragonsi]

I have discovered that all the sites I host on my server package with 2GlobalMart.com (shared hosting)are listed twice on Google (maybe others). Both with and without the www. part of the URL.
e.g.
http://www.dragonsi.co.uk
http://dragonsi.co.uk

I have got into the habbit of linking these sites by using the non www address and have also noticed that in some cases, the non www address is ranked higher than the normal (?) www address.

Why does this happen when there are the same domain?

Should I add the 'www' to all my links?

[ronniethedodger]

No, it does not matter which method you use.

What does matter is that you are consistant in it's use. This means that all internal and external backlinks need to use the same method, whether that be with the www. or without it.

The preferred method is to always include the www. prefix to your domain name, for clarity sake. Another reason is that other sites who add your link as part of an exchange, often include it without thinking about it....even if you instructed them not too. So it is a lot less hassle to always use the prefix in this regard.

If you are not consistant, then as you have noticed, it will appear to the search engines as two seperate sites. I do think in the case of Google, they eventually will come around and put two and two together and it will not matter. They did at my site, for I had them listed both ways...then the results finally merged into one. But that took quite some time for this to happen.

By the way, I do not use the www. prefix. And I have not had any problems in the search engines because of this.

[Dragonsi]

:) Cheers Ron

[cbp]

Google is seeing them as two different sites (actuially one is really a subdomain of the other, but I am technically chanllenged enough to not remeber which is which :-)

Normally, Google sorts this and sees them as one site, but I have seen a number of reports lately of this happening to several sites.

Hopefully Google will work it out (it has normally done so in the past), but best advice I have seen is to get the host to set up a permanent 301 redirect from http://dragonsi.co.uk to http://dragonsi.co.uk

CBP

[ronniethedodger]

Hopefully Google will work it out (it has normally done so in the past), but best advice I have seen is to get the host to set up a permanent 301 redirect from http://dragonsi.co.uk to http://dragonsi.co.uk

Yep, it could take a while before it happens. And that is just Google though. Not sure how the others handle it...probably not too well. Alexa does it automatically I have seen.

BTW, cbp....did you mean a 301 redirect from http://www.dragonsi.co.uk to http://dragonsi.co.uk or did you mean from http://dragonsi.co.uk to http://www.dragonsi.co.uk ???

I never even thought about that. It is a very good idea. Pretty clever, should take care of the other engines, eh?

[achronister]

Our IT department has our server set up so it will see only one. I'm not sure if it is a 301 redirect or not, but I think it is something you can set up in IIS.

If you would like me to inquire with our tech guys let me know and I'll try and find out.

Aaron

[Dragonsi]

As long as the sites get listed as one (eventualy), I will leave things alone for now, unless anyone thinks it could be harmful to the relavent sites PR..

You would think that SE's would be able to understand this simple equasion, afterall - the URL must point to the same domain, shouldn't it?