widget.com -> www.widget.com

redirect or symlink

[plasma]

Hi all,

here's my question of the day:

Some of my sites are twice in google:

widget.com
www.widget.com

At the moment I use symlinks.
How can I tell google that they are both the same?
I want the one without www to disappear from google.

Shall I use htaccess redirect?
I don't want to use robots.txt and i don't want to un-submit the site because I'm too afraid that both of them vanish.

If I use redirection: Isn't that forbidden?
Would 'moved permanently' do the trick?

[James_Dale]

If your site is in Google as domain.com, then perhaps people are linking to you without using the www?

Google treats domain.com and www.domain.com as separate entities, so it would be worth emailing your link partners and getting them to make sure they include the www. This will also consolidate your PR under the singular domain.

[heini]

Plasma, a 301 should do the trick perfectly.
In the libraray of this forum you'll find a very good primer on basic .htaccess techniques.

[plasma]

Thanks for your replies.

@James:
That is ok, all links go to www.

@heini:
Hm, couldn't find it in the library, do you have a link?

[heini]

It's the third post in the library:
An Introduction to Redirecting URLs on an Apache Server [webmasterworld.com]
Also a search for 301 brings up lots of very concrete examples and advice on how to do it.

HTH, else keep on asking, we have some real experts here on the topic (not me...:))