Best way to avoid canonicalization without 301 redirect.

Confused whether base tag is enough.

[pmidds]

When I do a Site:www.domain.com and a Site:domain.com I get the same number of results. Now reading this forum has told me this is an example of canonicalization and I could suffer from duplication penalty and halving of my PR. I can’t do a 301 redirect as my hosting company doesn’t let me access the required file.

Reading posts on here the best thing I can do is to standardise my internal links to the URL I want using the full path.

Now I’ve done this by using the <base> tag . So I have in my head section <base href="http://www.mydomain.com/" /> and then for my internal links I just have mypage.html.

Is the best way to do it or should I scrap the <base> tag and re-do all my internal links with the full path ie. [mydomain.com...] Or does it matter, are both methods exactly the same?

Thanks in Advance.

[Stefan]

When I do a Site:www.domain.com and a Site:domain.com I get the same number of results. Now reading this forum has told me this is an example of canonicalization and I could suffer from duplication penalty and halving of my PR.

Those searches don't indicate a problem. The way to best look for it is with a search of "site:example.com -inurl:www" minus quotes, space between .com and -inurl (parse the search and you'll see what's happening). That will show your domain pages that don't have a www on the front. Don't change anything unless you're sure it's necessary first. If you think you might have a canonical issue, read up on it, but if there is no obvious problem at the moment, don't rush into things until you know what you're doing.

<edit>Had about 5 "problems" in my post - stripped out a few.

[MrRoy]

I am facing a strange problem.
If i search for my website by typing "site:example.com", i get a total results set of 143000
But if i search for my website by typing "site:www.example.com", i get a total results set of 2
Really cant understand WHY?
Why it is showing only 2?
Strange problem which is not happening for other websites.

Also if i do my search as mentioned in the earlier post like
"site:example.com -inurl:www"
I get the same results set for "site:example.com"

Yes, pages without www are coming up but dint see any difference in the total no of search results.

Anybody having any idea?

[seochristine]

I am facing a similar problem as the one discussed above. The BigDaddy center is said to have improved the site: searches. The only improvement visible is that the no. of results displayed in the bar above has a huge increase but the results in the page remains the same as at my own datacenter.
"Results 1 - 1 of about 1,250" but showing only a single page.

[pmidds]

Thanks Stefan - thankfully the search you suggested doesn't show up any URLS for my site without the WWW so I have time to read up on the subject in case it happens in the future :)

[Stefan]

You're quite welcome, pmidds, but do check into the canonical stuff anyway, just in case.

MrRoy

I am facing a strange problem.
If i search for my website by typing "site:example.com", i get a total results set of 143000
But if i search for my website by typing "site:www.example.com", i get a total results set of 2
Really cant understand WHY?
Why it is showing only 2?
Strange problem which is not happening for other websites.

Also if i do my search as mentioned in the earlier post like
"site:example.com -inurl:www"
I get the same results set for "site:example.com"

Excuse me if I get this wrong - thinking about this stuff causes smoke to start drifting out of my ears sometimes. I'll try to explain it, and if I take a bad turn somewhere, maybe someone else will point it out.

"If i search for my website by typing "site:example.com", i get a total results set of 143000"

You have 143,000 urls's with the root domain, with or without the www.

"But if i search for my website by typing "site:www.example.com", i get a total results set of 2"

You have two url's listed with a www subdomain.

"if i do my search as mentioned in the earlier post like
"site:example.com -inurl:www"
I get the same results set for "site:example.com"

Here is the tricky part - G will show all the www subdomain url's when you search for the root domain (no www). However, if you narrow down the search to the www subdomain, you will only see those with a www on the front. The search "site:example.com -inurl:www" looks for the root domain pages that have no www on the front. So, all your url's, but two, have no www and so you get the same results as "site:example.com".

If anyone spots an enormous flaw in the above, feel free to correct me.

<edit>with or without</edit>