URL format for my site question?

[av8erab]

I have read some posts on what url to use when creating links to your home page.

The suggested format is "http://www.site.com/"

If I type in www.site.com I get my site.

If I type in site.com I get my site

Also with [site.com...]

Is this a problem? And if so how do I fix it?

Thanks

[Stefan]

Your server is set up to automatically deliver the page with or without the www subdomain. This is pretty common as the default action, but you don't want this to happen (causes canonical problems). You want to 301 redirect www or non-www to the preferred version.

If you're on Apache, you can fix it in the .htaccess. If you're on Windows, there's a way of doing it, but I know nothing about it.

If you search WW for "canonical", "non-www", etc, you should find a lot more info.

Don't worry about the with or without http:// - browsers automatically assume there's an http:// there and will add if it isn't.

[MichaelBluejay]

Perhaps you're now wondering whether to force the WWW or to remove it. On most of my sites I have my .htaccess file remove the WWW, as I consider the WWW to be an annoyance. But I just bought a new site that already has a whole bunch of links to www.thatdomain.com, so on that site I set up .htaccess to add the WWW if it's missing.

[httpwebwitch]

I like to keep the www. It indicates that this is a site on the World Wide Web. I can use the same domain for email, FTP and other uses.

mail.site.com
ftp.site.com
www.site.com
pop.site.com
beta.site.com

it's just a personal preference. I 301 all HTTP non-www requests to the www subdomain

[mack]

I think it makes sense for your server to accept requests to www.example.com and example.com but as for links to your site, you need to try and get all link to point to one or the other.

The problem becomes apparent when you have link pointing to example.com and www.example.com in effect you are linking to 2 different pages. They are the same page, but the search engines will see this as 2 different url's. What you are dong is doubling your promotional workload.

With search engines a link is a vote. You will want to get as many votes pointing to a page as possible. You will want to get as many of these votes as possible to point to the correct page.

Mack.

[av8erab]

Do the search engines look at having the two as a bad thing?

[Stefan]

Do the search engines look at having the two as a bad thing?

The biggest part of the problem is that it splits your available Page Rank with Google. Both versions, with and without www, will be listed, but only one will show in the serps. This will be the one that got the greater balance of the PR (however it happened), but it will still be reduced from its full value because of what was drained off by the other version.

Really, you want to concentrate everything into one specific canonical version for every page. Anything other than that is just causing confusion and dilution for the SE's (G in particular).

[av8erab]

I have always just used the www.

I don't know how it got to be without the www.

They both have the same pagerank.

Is there any way to fix it?

Thanks

[Stefan]

I don't know how it got to be without the www.

It's been both from the start. You might not have a problem at this time (meaning you might not have two versions listed) and should be careful about how you deal with it. Fix it, but don't panic. Read-up first.

If you have both listed independently, probably someone linked to you without the www.

For fixing it, see msg#2. Do you know if your server is using Apache? If not, use this tool on one of your URL's and it will tell you:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Stefan]

Start by seeing if you have two different versions of your site listed. Do it this way (exactly as shown, with a space before -inurl:www):

First search: ¦ site:www.example.com ¦in G. Note the results that you get.

Then search: ¦ site:example.com -inurl:www ¦ in G. Note the results that you get.

The first search will show all your pages listed with a www.

The second search will show all your pages listed without a www.

If you have pages that show in both those searches, you need to fix things. All of your pages should show up either with or without the www, depending on which version you prefer, but not both.

[av8erab]

I checked both and all the same pages show up for both.