ww.example showing in search - two w's instead of 3!

[EVILONE]

Has anyone ever dealt with this? The site (okglawyers.com) is showing two w's in the results. Huh? I checked every setting out there- A records - server settings - I set the domain as www in webmaster tools... I recently submitted a sitemap so i think it will change when that gets hit - but - WTF? How did that happen? How did it see only two w's?

[wige]

Well, ok, it is wierd, but it can happen. Because any possible subdomain variant will do a 301 redirect to the www subdomain, Google will usually use that subdomain. However, Google reserves the option to display the actual linked to address instead of the target of the redirection. This can happen in a few ways, and usually requires more than one factor to be true:

More links point to the original URL than point to the target URL, indicating that the original URL is easier to remember.

More PageRank flows to the original URL than to the target URL, indicating that the original URL is more popular according to the pagerank algorithm.

The original URL is used more prominently on the web site than the target URL, indicating it is preferred by the developer.

The search engine's heuristic analysis prefers the original URL over the target URL because it is shorter and/or more relevant to the original keywords.

Links to the original URL are surrounded by content more relevant to the search term than the content surrounding links to the destination URL.

Basically, somewhere on the Internet there exists one or more links to the ww subdomain, which for some reason Google likes better than all of the links to the www subdomain.

(Note, most of this information is based on conjecture and best guesses based on an old article from Google explaining why they showed "xbox.com" in the serps when that page actually redirected to "microsoft.com/something/something.aspx?other&else+something")

[EVILONE]

Wige-

Thanks for the conjecture! Thats the most info I have got on this in my week of searching and posting. Lord know Google was little help...

I have found no record of ww in my searches- but there may be an erroneous file out there...

In my A record there is a catchall *. pointing to the IP - maybe I should yank that, and use 301's to control the w. or ww. possibilities...

Thanks for you help - if anyone else has any info on any of this I would appreciate hearing it!

[wige]

Changing the catchall will only make these other domains stop working. Your server currrently does a 301 redirection to take those other domains and move them to the www subdomain. Essentially, if you turn off the catchall, it will no longer be possible to redirect miscellaneous error subdomains such as this ww.

[full house]

thats funny! It won't work if their is only two "w"!