One of my sites is ranked on the 2nd page of Google for a specific keyword as http://domain.com as opposed to http://www.domain.com. I was wondering how the following factors would play out if I were to 301 redirect domain.com to www.domain.com (www.domain.com is not currently listed in search results) 1) Would it hurt my ranking at all or would the www.domain.com simply replace the domain.com listing in the results? 2) Does it even matter? One thing to keep in mind is I'm trying to stay away from simply 301 redirecting the www.domain.com to domain.com for reasons of popular appeal. (Might sound stupid to some but thats another story) 3) Does Google give any kudos to sites formatted with the www extension as opposed to those that are not? I would think not but just checking... The reason I ask is because I've found it wouldn't take much to optimize a little and give this particular site a top position under a few excellent keywords given the competition and will be doing a bit of link building among other things. Wanting to square this away before I do that Also anything else I should know?
my understanding is 301 is pretty important, since google treats these are two different websites with same content as duplicates
the 301 redirect is a permanent redirect and it's recommended by google (friendly redirect).About your domain,you can log into your webmaster account and you will find an option there that tells google how to treat your domain and select as domain.com and www.domain.com to be treated as www.domain.com
301 redirects are much better that 302 redirects. The 301 are permanent which is what most people want.
When I change from domain.org to www.domain.org I don't do a 301 redirect, I place the following code into the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.org$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.org/$1 [R=301,L] But no, 301 redirects will certainly not harm your rankings.
Unless you don't want to transfer over the link equity of the page. Let's say for instance that you are signed up with feedburner. You are supposed to redirect the feed page on your domain to feedburner so they can track it. For that you would want to use a 302. With the 302 redirect you will keep the link equity, rather than giving it to feedburner.
301 redirect does not hurt your rank. it will transfer everythink from one domain to the other domain
It's not important at all whether you choose www or no www, but yes, you should definitely choose 1 or the other and do a redirect. As someone else said there is a preferences tab in "webmaster tools" in your google account to say which you prefer also.
a permanent redirect never harms your ranking but a temporary one does effect your ranking in Google.