301 Redirects, www and Non-www

What should we do - what can we expect?

[webconnoisseur]

There's been a lot of talk about using a 301 redirect so there aren't two versions of your site out there (www.widgets.com and widegets.com) - I believe it is also a way to avoid being hijacked. It seems like everyone is doing it now.

I have a couple things I would like to clarify on 301's via this example:

A site currently has no redirect - google sees both widgets.com (PR 7) and www.widgets.com (PR 6).

It seems like this site should do a 301 redirect to widgets.com (the higher PR ranking).

Here are my questions:
1) Might this give the site an overall boost in PR?
2) What is the short-term effect of making this change (could it change your rankings and for how long)?
3) Is www. better than non-www?

Also, if you recently made this change yourself - how did it go? Thanks for your help!

[johnhh]

Just to add: Watch out for the lower/upper case trap - as previously posted - developing on our version of Dreamweaver in Windows will not pick them up when checking links. so windows will find filename.HTM even if the link is written to filename.htm, Unix wil not.
Still being caught by this after x years!

[claus]

>> they can do a 301 redirect using an asp.net script

Don't let anyone fool you into using a response.redirect ASP script thinking that this is a 301. It is not. It's a 302 - and the devil is in the details.

Se post #380 here for alternative advice on IIS servers:

Google's 302 Redirect Problem (message # 380) [webmasterworld.com]

[gomer]

We are accomplishing a 301 redirect from non-www to www as follows on an Apache server:

We set up virtual host by name support for www. We then added another virtual host for the non-www and did a permanent (301) redirect to the www virtual host.

Can anyone provide comments as to whether this is a correct and appropriate way of doing this.

Thanks.
gomer

[gomer]

Just wanted to add one thing to my post above.

With the virtual host method described above, when you request:

http://example.com
the address line in your browser is re-directed to:
http://www.example.com

As I understand it, with the 'server alias' method:

requesting:
http://example.com
the address line in your browser is NOT re-directed to:
http://www.example.com

Is this correct? Is the virtual host method appropriate for the redirect from non-www to www? Is it any different from the 'server alias' method.

Thanks.

[twebdonny]

We followed the rules, edited the htaccess to remove non www and dynamic pages...and now our main index.htm is MIA
from Google. Beware...

[danimal]

>>>As I understand it, with the 'server alias' method:
requesting:
http://example.com
the address line in your browser is NOT re-directed to:
http://www.example.com<<<

that is NOT correct... i did the .htaccess method and everything re-directed just like it's supposed to, immediately... you can test it for yourself.

i don't understand this virtual host thing you are describing... are you saying that you completely copied your original site and put it online? two versions of the same site?

[gomer]

that is NOT correct... i did the .htaccess method and everything re-directed just like it's supposed to, immediately... you can test it for yourself.

I was more asking what the result is with the server alias method. I thought you would not see the actual redirect in the address line in your browser but thanks for letting me know that is not the case.

i don't understand this virtual host thing you are describing... are you saying that you completely copied your original site and put it online? two versions of the same site?

No, there is only one copy of the site. It is just the way Apache is configured in httpd.conf that allows this - you don't have to create another copy of the pages on the site.

[stinkfoot]

try useing wget to look at the pages much more detail there .. browsers are for users not webmasters :)

[Sam1234]

So If the Web site is on a Windows server that supports ASP scripts. Can I do a 301 redirect to direect the non www adrress to the www address?

[claus]

>> on a Windows server that supports ASP scripts

Please... I put a nice visible link to a post with info on IIS / ASP and so on in my previous post (post #122). I don't do that to trick you, you know. You will find the answer there. It's still on WebmasterWorld, so click it.

Clickety-click...

--

<%
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://www.newdomain.com/"
Response.End
%>