PageRank on example.com and www.example.com

http://www. vs http://

[mmmwowmmm]

Hello,
I have bought a link on a PR 5 website. I just noticed that if you go to [example.com...] it is a PR 5, but if you go to [example.com...] it is only a PR 1. I thought those were the same page, how could this be?

[benevolent001]

google takes them as different urls and hence difference PR

[mmmwowmmm]

Aren't the two pages exactly the same? Is it because some of your incoming links point to one url and some the other? If that is the case, it seems like a huge oversite on Googles part to give such much importance to a meaningless technicality.

As a webmaster is there any way to control this?

[benevolent001]

u can do reditect for non www site to www.site to avoid this

[joeduck]

does anybody know the line needed in the .htaccess file to do the redirection of http:// to [www...] for all the files in the site?

mmm - ask your ISP if they can fix this at the root server level which is better than using .htaccess, which is a file used by Apache to handle redirection.

[mmmwowmmm]

Ok, but is the a difference of PR because some IBL's point to one Url and some the other? When aquiring IBL's, is it better to try to have all of them pointing to just one of the Url's?

[joeduck]

mmm -

Most people at WebmasterWorld seem to think it's best to choose ONE or the other (WWW or non WWW) and point all your links to that and redirect server to that single one. I've had great luck and PR for years with a site that does NOT do that but recently saw a traffic drop so I'm changing to "all WWW" format as a hopeful fix.

Based on the info I've seen and my own sites I think Google usually considers www and non www the "same page", but if there are many links to each they go ahead and assign different PR.

[dylans]

we were just discussing this (not this point exactly, but pretty darn close) over at this thread. check it out: [webmasterworld.com...]

[Jim Westergren]

These are the lines in the .htacess:

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

I use them myself and it works good.

[joeduck]

Thanks Jim! - I also just got this suggestion in the Apache Forum. I'll try them both and whichever works is the right answer!

# Force www canonical hostname
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com
rewriterule (.*) [example.com...] [R=301,L]
#
# Rewrite all requests to www subdirectory, but prevent rewrite looping
RewriteCond $1!^www/
rewriterule (.*) /www/$1 [L]
#
# Forbid direct-request access to /www subfolder
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\ /www/
rewriterule .* - [F]

[joeduck]

Shucks, neither of the new .htaccess forces the http:// to [www...]