On www vs. not-www, in-bound links, and SEO

I've figured out how to change not-www to www, but...

[ThatAdamGuy]

In a separate forum on WW, a kind fellow member helped me tweak my .htaccess file so that all incoming requests to my site in the form of mysite.com are automatically rewritten to www.mysite.com

I figured this'd be helpful for consistency sake, and it just seemed like the right thing to do.

But now I still have a concern. :¦

Specifically, should I be worried about all those inbound links already in existence that are in the form of mysite.com/somedirectory?

In particular, will Google figure out that these are the same as www.mysite.com/somedirectory, and credit my site (PR) accordingly?

Or do I need to start going through and requesting Webmasters to update my links? <sigh>

[buckworks]

I agree, it makes intuitive sense that having your link popularity and PR focused on one URL would pack more punch than having them scattered amongst variations.

Some months Google seems to "get it" that www and non-www URLs are the same page, deserve the same PR, etc. Other months it treats them differently. Other search engines are also inconsistent in how they handle www vs. non-www. variations.

As for requesting changes to existing links that aren't in the form you'd prefer, I've done it, and I'm convinced it was worth the effort. I can't prove that, though.

For sure I figure it "won't hurt, might help." It would depend on what else was fighting for attention on your to-do list, I suppose!

[ThatAdamGuy]

Sadly, though, many of the mysite.com references are from my own posts on other forums and sites (via my sig) on a HUGE variety of other sites. While I can certainly change my sig retroactively in some places, in many others it's in guestbooks and so on. Bummer :¦