www or not?

[Cam Photographer]

What is the difference between http:// and [www?...]

How do the serch engine treat each domain and should I set up a 301 for the http:// to link to the www.

Thanks.

[ZydoSEO]

You DEFINITELY want to pick one way of referencing your domain (http://example.com or http://www.example.com) and be consistent. Once you've chosen one, you should 301 redirect the other to the chosen one. You only want one way to refer to each page on your site. Allowing your site to get indexed both ways leads to split link equity/juice as each unique URL is treated as a separate page in their indexes.

It shouldn't matter which you pick. I don't think there is any evidence that the SEs like one over the other.

[edited by: ZydoSEO at 6:24 pm (utc) on Nov. 25, 2008]

[MadeWillis]

Do you see a difference in PageRank between the two?

The engines have become pretty good at sorting out the difference, but it is still recommended to use a 301 redirect to a single canonical URL.

[Cam Photographer]

Thanks,

I'm not quite sure how to do the redirects.

I want to change to www.

[()?...] mydomain

www redirection:
1.Only redirect with www.
2.Redirect with or without www.
3.Do Not Redirect www.

Which one?

[MadeWillis]

Here's a few threads on the topic:

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

I prefer to keep the www, but it's whatever your prefer

[dailypress]

I agree. Keep the www. similar to what google has done. + some people search keywords including the www in search engines. i.e.:
"www mykeyword"

[Cam Photographer]

Worked it out, but didn't get a chance to reply earlier. What was confusing was that I had redesigned my website and introduced new keyword friendly urls.

Got a few 404s during the process, but I believe all the 301s are working. It will be interesting to see the benefits of increased link juice.

Thanks

[bilalseo]

you can try IIS for redirection. it is the best.

[bill]

you can try IIS for redirection. it is the best.

You're kidding, right? Apache redirects are so much easier than IIS that most IIS web-server admins will pay to get the same functionality via ISAPI_Rewrite.

[bilalseo]

:) Yea I'm kidding ... IIS are easier than appache redirects :) IIS even a child can do.. sorry to say.. but I would prefer IIS redirects instead of using scripting etc etc..

[ZydoSEO]

I've recently begun using ISAPI Rewrite. I works great for the most part, although it is not 100% compatible w/ mod_rewrite. They still haven't implemented all of the flags in ISAPI Rewrite that are availabe in mod_rewrite.