2 domains on 1 IP as 1 site

[rickagain]

Not sure where to look or who to ask... for the past 5 or 6 years I've had 2 domains used for one web site;

blue-widgets.com & bluewidgets.com

I had the hyphen name first, then got the oneword name - so my host set it up so that both name point to the one web site - and so that blue-widgets.com/dir & bluewidgets.com/dir go to the same page.

I have had no problems with this, or so I thought.

I just checked my google links and found quite a few good links to bluewidgets.com (blue-widgets.com has 20 times more).

looking closer, included in the results for link:www.bluewidgets.com are some sites linking to blue-widgets.com (no www. with hyphen?).

I then checked a popular link pop reporting site for the link pop of;

blue-widgets.com
www.blue-widgets.com
bluewidgets.com
www.bluewidgets.com

None are the same, only a small difference with & without the www. BUT the hyphen / non-hyphen difference is huge.

It's unlikely I can ask all sites linking to www.bluewidgets.com to change their link to www.blue-widgets.com - and its very important that all the directories and pages can be found with or without the hyphenated domain.

Who do I talk to and what do I ask for to make the Internet know that both domains (with & without the w's) are one web site?

Thanks

[pmkpmk]

Have your web-hoster place "permanent redirects" from the secondary site to the primary site.

Over a (probably long) period of time, SERPS should adjust.

[rickagain]

Thanks pmkpmk

Will that automatically work for all files and dirctories? As the site is always growing, would I need to make changes everytime I added a file or directory?

[pmkpmk]

Depends on the parameters you use. Apache configuration is a science of itself which I haven't fully mastered yet.

Have a look on the Apache online documentation - there are also some helpful and knowledgeable members here.

I'm sure there IS a way to do it.

If you have the solution, please post it.

If you want to make it page by page, then simply add to your .htaccess file of the secondary host entries like these:

RedirectPermanet /page-on-secondary-site.html http://www.primary-site.com/page-in-primary-site.html

[rickagain]

Thanks for the extra info...

I looked a bit deeper, and checked the links to a few subdirectories & files... and they seemed to be the same with & without the hyphen? ie. both

www.blue-widgets.com/widgets/
www.bluewidgets.com/widgets/

showed the same links (from within my site and from other sites linking to it).

So maybe I just need to sort out the root...

Thanks to the tips here, I probably have enough of an understanding to contact my host and ask them some questions...