www. with linking

[whatson]

I was wondering if a site links to your site with [yoursite.com,...] does it make any difference from [yoursite.com?...] Will Google consider them 2 different sites?

[rfgdxm1]

Setting up a permanent redirect from root to the www subdomain (or, vice-versa) would eliminate any doubt.

[whatson]

But does Google treat [yoursite.com...] and [yoursite.com...] as 2 unique sites?

[rfgdxm1]

Not usually, but it is possible Google could get confused. For those unaware, it is very easy to put one site at [domain.com,...] and a completely different site at [domain.com....] Technically, these are 2 different sites. However, only a weirdo would do this. Although, I know 2 of one ISP, and one independent Usenet provider, who have *intentionally* set up their servers so that [domain.com...] doesn't resolve, and you have to use the www subdomain. Personally, I consider both idiots. Hey, if they want to lose money to competitors when potential customers think they are down...

[whatson]

I was thinking more for link purposes, as if sites link to the different urls then maybe you will not get all the link popularity you should.

[rfgdxm1]

Google should merge these. Using a redirect on one to the other may make it more obvious. And, remember Google isn't the only search engine.

[bathheaven]

Google counts www. and non www. as the same, but "all the web", altavista,inktomi, and msn count them as differant

[buckworks]

I'm convinced that it's wise to aim for consistency in your link popularity. There are enough reports of search engines treating www.somesite.com and somesite.com differently that it makes sense to try to focus your link pop on one form or the other rather than letting it get split between the two. It's one of those "can't hurt, might help" issues.

[steveb]

"Google counts www. and non www as the same."

No they don't. They are different pages and have different backlinks and pagerank. Webmasters and webhosts can do something about that but if nothing is done they will show as distinct pages. You should get all your links pointing to one or the other.

[DavidT]

agreeing with steveb here, G has in the past listed my root page twice, once with www. once without.

[ruserious]

Yes, I also agree steveb from my own experience. We finally set up a redirect with .htaccess as described in this excellent post:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Also make sure, that you have no links on your homepage that link to the "wrong" one, this will diminish the chances of getting the link to the "wrong" site.