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]

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