Question regarding backlinks with and without 'www'

[Scurramunga]

Hi,

Searching through multiple data centres using a 'backlink check tool' to search Google listings of backlinks to my site I notice all is well when I type "http://www.mydomain.com", as I see a result showing about 40 backlinks

However, if I type "http://mydomain.com/" or "mydomain.com" I see a result of 0 backlinks returned.

Yet note that some sites do return backlink results whatever protocol is typed or simply when a domain is typed.

Does anybody know why? Any help would be great. Thank you

I apologise in advance for this being such a basic question

[g1smd]

As far as Google is concerned www.domain.com is a separate site to domain.com - and it takes Google a very long time to merge the data.

If you use a 301 redirect, from non-www to www then they will sort this out much faster than otherwise.

[Scurramunga]

g1smd,

Thank you very much for your reply. I will give your suggestion a try.

It raises another question for me; I usually allow google to find urls on it's own, however I wonder if Google would frown upon the practice of submitting two unique urls as:

url#1 [mydomain...]
url#2 [mydomain...]

[tedster]

It's not a question of frowning on or disapproving -- it's more a question of giving Google confusing signals and making it more difficult for them to generate a clear picture of your website. Uness you are serving different content at www.example.com and example.com, pick one version and be constent in every link.

If you submit (do you mean use the submission tool? sitemap?) urls that are formed differently, Google will still attempt to crawl all the links on the page, eventually. If those urls are relative, then the "with-www" or "no-www" format will be preserved for the target pages pf those links, giving Google two distinct copies of your website. Historically this has made trouble that can take a long time to get sorted out.

[Scurramunga]

Tedster, thanks for replying

If you submit (do you mean use the submission tool? sitemap?

On the few occasion I have submitted In the past it has always been via the submission tool.

Recently however I was looking to submitting my first Google xml sitemap. At the time I was ready to submit however this little dilemma had stopped me in my tracks.