Homepage indexed twice

How to tell, and how to fix?

[MatthewHSE]

From another thread:

moishe, if you haven't done so, I suggest you check your main page is only indexed once in Google. It can happen that 'www.domain.com/' or 'domain.com/' or 'www.domain.com/index.html' can get indexed separately and splits the main page PR.

I use [domain.com...] (no w's) for links to my site. Obviously I have no control over how other sites link to me, and I suspect that some are using w's in their links to my site.

In checking my site's PR, I find the following:

[domain.com...] - PR6
[domain.com...] - PR4

Searching for both addresses on Google results in a summary. Searching with the w's in front of the domain shows no backlinks; searching without the w's shows over 100.

I assume this means my homepage is indexed twice by Google, once with the w's and once without. My questions are:

1. How can I verify that this is true?
   
2. What problems (if any) is this likely to cause?
   
3. Are there any steps I can/should take to correct this issue? A 301 redirect of some sort through .htaccess, maybe?
   
4. If I try to correct the "problem", are there any potentially-damaging side effects?
   
5. Is there any other related information I should know?

Sorry if these are basic questions. I know this topic has been "done to death" before but I can't seem to find the specific information I'm looking for. I'd sure appreciate some advice!

Thanks in advance,

Matthew

P.S. One more thing; what with PR4 and PR6 for the same page, is the PR6 page likely to jump up at all if I try to fix this?

[walkman]

Hi,
I used:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [domain.com...] [R=permanent,L]

and it worked great.

I still have a question if this (domain.com and www.) effects the SERPS in any way...

anyone?

[MatthewHSE]

Hi, thanks for the advice.

Does this rewrite the URL's to include the w's, or to eliminate the w's?

Also, would I need to use the Google "Remove Page" feature to get rid of one of the pages from their index?

[div01]

Does this rewrite the URL's to include the w's, or to eliminate the w's?

It forwards a request for domain.com to www.domain.com. So it adds the www if it is not used.

ps - Walkman, thanks for the code snippet...it helped me aswell.

[weela]

silly question, but is that a .htaccess mod or to be added to the index page itself?

[jdMorgan]

It's for inclusion in the Web root directory .htaccess file.

The opposite function, rewriting www to non-www, would be:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

I included the Options directive, as some hosting configurations will require it.

Jim

[MatthewHSE]

Great, thanks. Now that I've got that figured out, do I need to do anything about removing www.mydomain.com from the index, or will Google pick up on it themselves?

[steveb]

MatthewHSE, don't so anything to remove the www from the index. It will just disappear on its own. Making the 301 change is all you need be concerned with.

[Spine]

Hey, that snippet worked for me! Excellent, as I've been trying all afternoon using similar examples from other threads with no luck.

[tomda]

Stupid question, but how do you check for your PR?

I mean I have the Google toolbar but to check for my PR, I must go to my website first - and [example.com...] is automatically changed to [example.com....]

So how do you do to get PR for different index URL?

Secondly, how do you check for links for the one zithouth the w's. Typing "link:example.com" in Google is not considered as correct.

Thanks

[Spine]

I'm seeing an awful lot of sites showing up with no www. over the past couple of weeks.

[jdMorgan]

Recently, I noticed Google trying to spider a couple of my sites without the "www". Each attempted fetch resulted in a 301 redirect to the "www" domain. Maybe they're trying to find and remove duplicates, or maybe just trying to save four characters on each URL indexed and listed. I kept an eye on it, and it only happened once. If it had continued, I intended to complain about it - several hundred redirects, one for each page -- it was making messy log files and getting annoying.

Out of hundreds of backlinks, the sites have only a handful pointed to the non-www domain. The sites have had the 301 domain redirects in place since inception, so this must have been a conscious decision by Google to "try the non-www" while spidering, rather than de-duplicating in the back-end processing as in the past.

Jim

[moishe]

on the same subject:

is [domain.com...]

the same as

[domain.com...]

I have a PR4 on both of these, all external links point to domain.com and all internals point to index.html

Am I bleeding PR across what Google considers two different pages?

If so should I change all internal links to point to www.domain.com or just use "/"?

[redleaf]

Hey guys, many many thanks for all of your clue and help! i had the same problem as Mathew..panic for a night and its all solved now. thanks a lot again. and hopefully some day i can contribute as well!

[walkman]

"Am I bleeding PR across what Google considers two different pages? "

Need to know too. Many of my pages been indexed with and without the www.

Anyone?

[jdMorgan]

> bleeding PR

No, but you might be splitting it across the two URLs, and relying on a search engine's back-end "clean-up" routine to get it right.

With domains/subdomains and page names, best results will be achieved by being absolutely consistent. That is, it doesn't matter what you call a thing, as long as you always call it by the same name, everyone will understand.

The "cleaner" your site is, the easier it is for robots, indexing routines, and humans to understand.

Jim