www.mydomain versus mydomain.com

[AffiliateDreamer]

Why can't G keep the same PR for domains with the www and those w/o www?

I think its pointless to rank the same site with 2 different PR .

[ciml]

There's no reason why example.com, www.example.com, www2.example.com and even w.w.AffiliateDreamer.w.example.com can't all be different Web sites.

Google makes some assumptions about the content behind URLs (eg. treating "/index.html" as "/"), but the 'www.whatever usually is the same as whatever' assumption isn't one of them.

If Googlebot finds identical content then they'll probably be merged, but keep in mind that the robot might hit the two URLs at different times so if the content changes in between they won't be merged.

I favour using an HTTP status 301 redirect from example.com to www.example.com; although Google sometimes does strange things with redirects the 301 approach normally has the desired effect.

[GoogleGuy]

"I favour using an HTTP status 301 redirect from example.com to www.example.com"

I agree, ciml. It helps spiders to know that the two sites are the same..

[jbcobbs]

How do i implement this "HTTP status 301 redirect".