PageRank with and without www

[tomapple]

I am seeking an answer as to why two sites I have that are both hosted on IIS servers act differently when checking PageRank and backlinks (to the best of our checking the setup on both sites in IIS is the same)

One site shows the same PR and same number of backlinks with domainname.com or www.domainname.com while the other shows no PR and no backlinks when checking anotherdomainname.com, but PR and backlinks show for www.anotherdomainname.com

[lazerzubb]

[webmasterworld.com...]

Might help.

[tomapple]

Thanks for the reply. (I had previously read the thread you mentioned.)

I have seen site after site that Google shows having the same PR and backlinks either way.

If the difference in PR and links is not related to server setup, the question becomes "how do you get Google to recognize a domain with and without www being the same site and merge them?"

[Jenstar]

Change your .htaccess file to redirect the non-www version to the www version (or vice versa) and Google will then figure it out.

Check out this thread:
Different PageRanks for same site? [webmasterworld.com]
for more information on redirecting via your .htaccess file.

[ncsuk]

I noticed as well that if you have a page which is a whitebar on the www. it will show the rank as something else on the non www. site. Seems to me that pageranks lower than 4 are not showing on the www. sites.

*Hope that wasnt too confusing

{edit} got that all wrong sorry,

whitebar on non www = PR on www. of 3 or under

[tomapple]

Yes, I know I can redirect the non-www to www. But, what I am seeing on these sites is not a redirect (you type in a URL with or without www and the URL stays the same...not being redirected).

What is it that triggers Google into seeing both www and non-www URLs as being the same site and then combining them?

[ncsuk]

With and without www. are considered different domains. The best thing to do is setup a Permanant 302 redirect from one to the other so whichever one you dont want doesnt get listed.

Probably the reason they have both been picked up is that someone has linked to you with the www bit.

[Jenstar]

Usually it is because there are links that point to the domain.com rather than the www.domain.com so Googlebot heads over to the domain.com and indexes the site. And because there are much fewer backlinks to a non-www site (although some people do plan their sites vice versa) it will usually have the lower pagerank.

Using the .htaccess redirect will make Google realize they are both the same, or you can find the non-www links and ask the site's to change to the www.domain.com instead, and hope that Googlebot realizes the two are the same. They are technically two different URLs in Googlebot's eyes, which is why this happens.

Also, if you made changes to your index page between the crawling of the www and the non-www, that might also contribute to Google not realizing they are the same. Likewise if one of the pages gets it's cached page updated on a regular basis.

I think also the usage of directory.google.com is part of te problem, because Googlebot is looking for different names in that www field, and not having the www there is considered different.

I hope this helps explain it.

[ewanfisher]

brotherhood of LAN said in the post lazerzubb linked to:

I was thinking that maybe if googlebot spiders your page following a link from domain.com > then > you change the page and it comes from another links as www.domain.com then maybe that's why G bot would make a distinct difference between the pages, otherwise if they match on both spiders they are the same page (?)

If both addresses are linked to from other pages, then if Googlebot notices the same content it merges the two domains to one therefore having the same PR and back links.

I agree with ncsuk, but I think he meant 301 redirect.