Ads More Targetted without WWW Prefix?

[JasonDX]

Adsense ads on my site are different when I remove the www prefix from the urls. Generally, they are more targetted without the www prefix.

Anyone else seeing this?

[londrum]

i would imagine that's a byproduct of something else. we know that google used to consider

http://www.example

and

http://example

as two different sites, so maybe they are crawling everything again from scratch when you remove the wwww, reset-ing all your ad's stats.
after a while it will probably go back to how it was.

[incrediBILL]

we know that google used to consider http://www.example and http://example as two different sites

They still do, it's known as a canonicalization issue, and it also dilutes your PR in Google if you have both indexed separately.

You need to make one your primary domain and 301 redirect the other to your primary and then make sure Google knows for sure which is preferred in WMT.

In Google's Webmaster Tools, under Site Configuration - Setting, select one:

Preferred domain

• Don't set a preferred domain
  
• Display URLs as www.example.com
  
• Display URLs as example.com

[surfer67]

They still do, it's known as a canonicalization issue, and it also dilutes your PR in Google if you have both indexed separately.

Utter nonsense for Google to index the same site seperately because of the prefix. It's laughable.

[incrediBILL]

Utter nonsense for Google to index the same site seperately because of the prefix. It's laughable.

Other SEs do it too.

Just because an alias for www is setup as a subdomain by default by most hosting companies so that requests to www.example.com is sent to the same website that handles the requests for example.com doesn't mean they're always the same.

It's your job to configure it properly, not their job to sort it out.

Browsers may make assumptions about adding "www." to make it easier for surfers to find sites that but still has nothing to do with the actual proper implementation of DNS records for the server nor whether example.com and www.example.com resolve to the same website.

[netmeg]

Utter nonsense for Google to index the same site seperately because of the prefix. It's laughable.

Ignore it at your peril. They all do the same thing. It's pretty much the spec. And if you think that's laughable, you'll be in hysterics to know that http://example.com/ is considered a different url than http://example.com too.

I haven't noticed any issues as far as targeting with or without the www. I am dropping it where I can just because I prefer to keep the domains as short as I can get away with. I switched one of my main sites over last year during the "down" season; it only took about a week for Google to get it all sorted out and indexed properly, and I didn't see any drop in ranking or traffic. I did take a toolbar PR hit for a while (most of my inbound links were to the www version, and still are), but since it didn't affect traffic or ranking, I don't much care about that.

[micklearn]

@JasonDX - I've never tested that scenario, but I don't understand why that would make such a difference in the ads shown. It's the same content that has been crawled, right? Nonetheless, I would take incrediBILL's advice.

@netmeg - When I go to: http://example.com, most browers seem to take me to: http://example.com/ (adding the slash on their own, on all of the sites that I tested). I guess, I'm not sure what you meant by "is considered a different url". Surely, it's not a good thing if browsers and search engines aren't on the same "page" these days.

[incrediBILL]

http://example.com, most browers seem to take me to: http://example.com/ (adding the slash on their own, on all of the sites that I tested).

The slash has nothing to do with anything.

We're talking about the difference of www.example.com and example.com which are technically two separate domains unless you merge them together via DNS records and/or 301 redirects.

[micklearn]

@incrediBILL - I knew what you were talking about, I was just curious about netmeg's statement: "you'll be in hysterics to know that http://example.com/ is considered a different url than http://example.com too."

Just to be clear, you're saying that, http://example.com = http://example.com/ (with or without the www. prefix). Right?

I was also curious about why the ads would be more targetted one way or the other (with or without the www. prefix). If the content has been crawled, shouldn't the ads reflect that fact?

Sorry, if I've taken things a bit off-topic.

[incrediBILL]

http://example.com = http://example.com/

Nope, those are 2 different pages according to the SEs.

None of the following are the same page:

http://example.com
http://example.com/
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/index.html
http://example.com/index.asp
http://www.example.com/index.php


All of these variants need to be forced to redirect to a single variant, either http://example.com/ or http://www.example.com/ - pick one and redirect all others to that one and live with it forever.

Additionally, parameters also make each page unique as these aren't the same either:

http://example.com/index.html?affid=1203
http://www.example.com/index.html?user=606
http://www.example.com/index.asp?page=10

That's why sites grab the affiliate codes like the affid above, store it in a session, then redirect back to the page without the affid on the URI.

WebmasterWorld's Google forum has several archive threads on the canonical topic [webmasterworld.com], scroll down, they're grouped together. Also, here's an in-depth post on canonicalization [mattcutts.com] by Google's Matt Cutts that I think you need to read.

Hope that helps you sort it out.

Why this would affect AdSense is because of the following:

The indexed page in Google is http://www.example.com/mywidget.html which AdSense knows what ads to display.

Along comes a surfer to http://example.com/mywidget.html which is a different subdomain with the same page name that's already indexed with the "www." variant, and now neither AdSense nor Google have indexed this new variant so the ads are different, or altogether off kilter because of many variables that differ between the "www." and non-www site.

Now you also have the added problem that the page is indexed twice in the SE and it's competing with itself.

They need to be canonicalized to only be indexed as a single entity, either with or without the "www", and then your SE rankings and Adense targeting will improve across the board.

[netmeg]

Thanks Bill, you saved me a lot of typing. (ork ork)

[micklearn]

A "thanks, Bill." post from me would be understating my gratitude for taking the time to explain everything. Truly appreciate your effort and explanation of how things work. Best, Mick.