Does Google consider www.domain.com and domain.com different?

[KLite]

Sorry for this newbie question, I am not an SEO.

Does Google consider www.domain.com and domain.com different?

[satanclaus]

www.domain.com and domain.com are the same domain.

a.domain.com and b.domain.com are considered two different domains by Google.

[ggrot]

Sometimes you'll see different pageranks for the www.domain vs just domain.

[satanclaus]

ggrot you've got me unsure now. Someone want to clarify?

[Conard]

I think the different PR could be that some links are to domain.com and others are to www.domain.com

[ggrot]

Conard, Im fairly sure that is the case, but that does indicate some type of differentiation between the urls.

[WebGuerrilla]

This is one of those areas where there doesn't seem to be a consistant patteren.

In most cases, Google treats www.domain.com and domain.com the same. But in some cases, (like WebmasterWorld) it treats the two quite differently. I'm still not clear on what causes this.

Here is an older thread that you might want to read.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Brett_Tabke]

I just addressed this finally today. I want users to be able to use domain.com, but want them to bookmark www.domain.com. So, htaccess/mod_rewrite to the rescue. I think this will solve it and keep everyone happy:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^webmasterworld
RewriteRule ^(.+) [webmasterworld.com...] [L,R=301]

Which causes a 301 (moved perm) redirect.

I'll let you know after the next update, what Googlebot thinks of it.

[Crazy_Fool]

Does Google consider www.domain.com and domain.com different?

two of my client's sites have some pages listed with the www and some without. there are inbound links both with and without the www. on both sites, no two pages are listed twice, which indicates that google treats domain.com and www.domain.com as being the same site. both sites have been listed in google for several months.

one site has about half its pages listed with the www and the other half without. pagerank is the same (5 and 4) throughout the site both with and without the www. the other site has only a couple of pages listed without the www, and the pagerank is 5 with the www and zero without.

personally i would have thought google would deal with sites like this in the same way as it deals with sites which have multiple domain names (ie, listing the pages from one and ignoring the other) but this doesn't seem to be the case.

[TopRankingSEO]

I believe - Google consider www.domain.com and domain.com as different sites.

I am sure many of you know that www.domain.com is a TLD and you can host a site which is totally different than the site hosted on the main domain (domain.com)

on both sites, no two pages are listed twice, which indicates that google treats domain.com and www.domain.com as being the same site.

NO. It indicates that google can recognize and DONOT list similar pages.

[ciml]

Brett, I'll be interested to see what happens. Since the latest (strange) update I've been given an example of a site where GoogleBot has trouble with (or if you're paranoid, "penalised") the PageRank of and inbound links to the two addresses, even though one redirects (302) to the other. Maybe 301 is treated differently?

TopRankingSEO:
> It indicates that google can recognize and DONOT list similar pages.

Indeed. Pages not domains...Pages not domains...Pages not domains...

Calum

[Brett_Tabke]

It will probably take two updates before I see the effect ciml. I'm not crazy about this solution from a seo standpoint, but it needed to be done for things like cookies and bad link backs. I can't garantee that the non www.domain.tld version will always be available.

I wish Google was/could be more forthcoming with technical details like this.

[TopRankingSEO]

As per my limited knowledge about Google, domains DON'T have any PageRank but pages have! Hence I 100% agree with ciml - Pages not domains...Pages not domains...Pages not domains... :)

[Brett_Tabke]

Really? Got the toolbar installed? Check the page rank of this page [webmasterworld.com] that I just created. How can it have page rank, if not inherited from the domain?

[WebGuerrilla]

What is the most interesting about that new page is that it's toolbar PR is 6, while the PR of this thread is only 5. Since neither page has been crawled one would have to think that these "guesstimates" are taking page level into consideration.

[Brett_Tabke]

Sure gives credence to those seo's who say to throw every file in root eh?

[TopRankingSEO]

Nice google Brett :)

But it doesn't prove that Google consider www.domain.com and domain.com same.

[ciml]

Brett:
> Sure gives credence to those seo's who say to throw every file in root eh?

If their objective is to have a good ToolBar guess while those pages are unindexed by Google, then yes. ;)

Calum