Is my pagerank hurt if ODP lists my url without the www.

Everyone else linking to me uses the www.

[ineedmoreexercise]

If so, the weird thing is I rank great in the search results for a few key terms and the URL that google shows for those results is the one without the www. (from ODP).

Meanwhile, Yahoo and everyone else I know of that links to me uses the www.
ODP is the only one without it. Is the ODP link so strong that it would outweigh every other link? Or is Google combining the two urls (hopefully) and just listing the url without www.?

[John_Caius]

Any link into your site is as strong as the PR of the page the link is on divided by the number of links on the page. The anchor text is a very important factor. The ODP conforms to that rule just the same as any other page. However, an ODP link actually transforms through to a link on a Google Directory page as well as lots of links on very low PR pages for many other directories, enhancing its effect.

It's best if you can to have all incoming links with the same URL but the effect of a single aberrant link may be insignificant, depending on what other links you have.

[ineedmoreexercise]

Thank you. I guess all those directories using DMOZ are helping to trump all the other links to my site that use the proper url with the www.

It looks like I'll have to ask DMOZ to change my url to include the www.

Then again, if I ask DMOZ, will all of the other directories and sites that have used DMOZ data, update their sites as well to have my proper url?

Hmmmm. Probably not. Therefore, I might actually be better off getting my other link partners to change my url to take out the www. Uhg. Oh boy. This is a dilemma.

Too bad I just can't say to Google that I would like my url to be counted as the same whether someone has linked to it with the www. or without the www.

After all, I am the webmaster, and I should have control over something like that... If I want my site to be the same for a url with & without the www. that should be my choice, no?

Maybe someone who knows a lot more about coding than me, can implement this idea and come up with a piece of code that would make it so Google and other engines would see a url as one in the same regardless of whether or not the www. was included in the link to a site or not (assuming the webmaster wanted it that way)... Is it possible?

[rfgdxm1]

>Maybe someone who knows a lot more about coding than me, can implement this idea and come up with a piece of code that would make it so Google and other engines would see a url as one in the same regardless of whether or not the www. was included in the link to a site or not (assuming the webmaster wanted it that way)... Is it possible?

Do a server side redirect of root to the www subdomain.

[skiguide]

Definitely request a change straight to DMOZ - at least some their partners WILL eventually pick up the change when they do their RDF update. That's the easiest way of doing it, versus trying to get the other link partners, most of whom probably won't care enough to do it.

Just tell dmoz the proper format is to use "www" with your URL. of course, it might take awhile to get that change made, so be patient. Or, hope that Google changes something so that it sees them as the same page - it could happen.

in these types of cases i've discovered, google is very tied to EXACTLY what dmoz has. but it fluctuates a bit too, so it's hard to know exactly what to do about it.

for example, i've had google spidering & listing things like domain.com/index.html but without the corresponding DMOZ listing because that only has domain.com/ - even though they're the same thing. but then the next month it'll change again.

[ineedmoreexercise]

>Do a server side redirect of root to the www subdomain.

Will this make it so Google does not split my PR between the two url versions pointing to the same page? (One url with www. and one url without www.)?

[ineedmoreexercise]

skiguide, you're right it could happen. It would be great if someone could develope a line of code that makes it so Google can see the webmaster's preference on how to treat url differences... Especially if the true goal of Google is to provide relevant content (in part) by judging popularity, then Google's results are currently skewed and not as accurate as they could be when sites out their are having this problem of different link url's pointing to the same page and content.

[rfgdxm1]

>Will this make it so Google does not split my PR between the two url versions pointing to the same page? (One url with www. and one url without www.)?

In theory it should. The redirect is telling Google "there is no content at this URL, it is over here...". Google shouldn't be indexing URLs that just redirect.

[ineedmoreexercise]

rfgdxm1, very interesting theory.

My only concern would be if by doing the redirect Google would devalue the links since I am basically saying there is no content at this form of the url (even though sites/DMOZ are linking to it).

Do you think this could happen?

[rfgdxm1]

>My only concern would be if by doing the redirect Google would devalue the links since I am basically saying there is no content at this form of the url (even though sites/DMOZ are linking to it).

This shouldn't be a problem if it is a *permanent* redirect. What that means is "yes, there is content, but now it is no longer at this URL, and instead at this URL...".