non-www transition to www for old backlinks

Do I have to ask them all?

[wocka]

When I insterted the code into my htaccess file to redirect all non-www's to www's, my PR dropped to 0 (expected, as almost all of my backlinks point to http://example.com instead of http://www.example.com). Question:

Should I contact every non-www backlink and ask them to change to www?

[wocka]

It seems like MSN doesn't differentiate between www and non-www links, as the backlink count is the same for each, but G and Yahoo do make the differentiation.

So...with the proper redirect (301) script entered to make a non-www url a www url, can anyone shed some light on whether the link matters? (non-www vs. www)

Thanks.

[FTFlash]

Google treats [domain.com...] and [domain.com...] and [domain.com...] as different websites.

If I were you, I'd try to get all of your incoming links to be consistant. Either all www or all non-www. If you already have several hundred links that are non-www. I'd save yourself the time and keep them that way.

Hope this helps!

[sugarrae]

>>>Google treats [domain.com...] and [domain.com...] and [domain.com...] as different websites

Yea, but if you have a 301 on the versions that are not the chosen "main" you don't have issues with them being indexed - and if you aleady do, 301'ing the non desired versions will clear up the issue after several weeks/months.

Question for the originl poster - if most of your backlinks are to the non www, then why didn't you 301 the www to the non www? Neither is "better" than the other - it is mainly preference thing and as long as one of them is 301'ed, it doesn't matter if you use the www or non www version. Seems like you're creating a lot of extra work to hve the "preference" of the www.