WMT says I have more sites - with and without the "www"

[Hugene]

I verified a site, that shows up in the Sites section as it should:

www.widget.com

Now, I am seeing a notice in yellow saying "You have more sites!" and telling me that I have the following site verified:

widget.com

basically without the www.

Why is this? Could there be a problem, where Google doesn't understand that www. and no www. are the same? Should I add this site?

[tedster]

Technically they do NOT need to be the same site. See Why Does Google Treat "www" & "no-www" As Different? [webmasterworld.com] for all the ins and outs.

[Hugene]

Thanks tedster, understood, and it makes perfect sense that the 2 could be different.

I don't know what is happening with my domain: in the .htaccess there is no redirect between widget.com and www.widget.com, but when I type widget.com in a browser it does redirect me to the www. version. I guess there is some other redirect (maybe my host has a general redirect, or maybe the registrar, or maybe Wordpress (it's a WP site)).

So if I can't seem to access widget.com, how come Google sees it?

I am not adding it in Webmaster Tools for now. I would actually like to see it disappear, because I don't want to be hit with a duplicate penalty.

[bwnbwn]

it won' go away. Just add it to your list and that is that. If the www is alrady selected to display www it will remain that way. This add with not create a duplicate url issue. You can in the non www select to display the url www as well.