I am fairly new to the SEO/PR game, so please forgive me if my question seems elementary! Why do domains that list as www.domain.com show a different PR that simply http://domain.com??? And secondarily, how am I supposed to equalize them? I have one site- the www has a PR4, and the non-www has PR2! That's a big difference! Thanks for your help in advance! >>> SEOGulper <<<
Because technically they are different sites (with duplicate content). A good thing to do is redirect one to the other. A how-to on how to do that can be found here.
Thank you Shawn. However, that link seems to refer to someone who has root access. I do not. On a shared server, should I try to do a redirect via the htaccess file? I'm sorry for not knowing more!
Your .htaccess file should do just fine. If you need more info on how to format this (in terms of mod_rewrite) there's plenty of data available.. Alternately, you can use the header and/or status functions in PHP (if you use it) to redirect from an index file. Sometimes this can be the best way to go if you want any sort of analysis/tracking added later.
I feel like I'm a broken record today, but mod_rewrite + htaccess one of the best tools that an SEO/Webmaster can learn. Yes it is sort of complex for a newbie, but it will pay off in the end. Hexed
will the PR boost be very significant if we direct one to the other? http://domain.com and www.domain.com are both a PR5 for my site
Well, at the worst case, you could be dividing the value of your backlinks literally in half (if one half linked to www.mywonderfulsite.com and the othjer half to just mywonderfulsite.com). But, if you don't do a mod_rewrite or something much like, you are almost guaranteed to be losing at least some backlink value. Always: better safe than sorry. Pick one and set it in .htaccess.
I thank you all for some very informative answers..... HOWEVER... Damn! My PR4 domain (www.domain.com) just went DOWN to a PR3, while it's twin, (minus the www) raised from 2 to 3! How can this happen when nothing has changed? And if anything, there are MORE links pointing than before! I can't stand it! Sometimes it seems like Google is neurotic!
Thanks Eric! Could you maybe explain exactly how to do this? I'm a little gun-shy about messing around with the .htaccess file. Thanks for letting me "gulp", SEOGulper
Hmm... I did this back in June: RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^4kidsnus.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.4kidsnus.com/$1 [L,R=301] All worked well, but this morning I checked my backlinks: URLs I'm Tracking Back Links For URL Back Links PageRank Pages In URL Last Check 4kidsnus.com 3 1 283 Aug 10, 2004 www.4kidsnus.com 19 0 83 Aug 10, 2004 Any tips for the confused? Thanks!
I don't think Google values either differently, it's own websites all use www. , so if any, I would have thought it'd be that. WWW does it for me