Changing my site from e.g. "http://site.com" to "http://www.site.com"

Hey guys,
recently I noticed that on one of my forums, that there is a bug when people login. Somtimes their cookies are not working normally and they have to re-log again.

I identified the problem to be connected with the fact, that some internal links of the site were pointing to "http://site.com" and some to "http://www.site.com"

So what I did, was I synchronized the whole site to have a structure with "http://www.site.com" and the problem with the loggin thus was completely solved.

However I noticed that the total number of pages indexed by google has dropped from 90k to 49k. Do you think this might hurt my traffic, because I personally haven't noticed any significant change. And do you believe this is a result of the change which I did.

Should I roll back to the previous way it was, and leave the problem with the login, while keeping a higher index in google?

Thanks,
Niko

 

you should have created a redirect so that it could be accessed both ways

 

If anything, the consolidation will help your page strength flow and help your rankings.

 

You can also set the www of non www version for your website in Google Webmaster Tools.

 

Just log in and change it to www version, and make sure your site is accessible by both .

 

I am curious, how does one cteate a redirect, as I have the same problem.

 

If you can use mod_rewrite you can insert a rule like:
RewriteRule /(.*) http://www.site.com/$1 [R]

 

You have to first go to Google Webmaster tools and see what domain you have selected the "primary". For Google it 2 different sites with and without www. In the panel you would have seen and felt there, which take the main domain. Gradually, you will be 1 primary domain. If you want to accelerate it, you have to do 301 - redirect.

 

Just some food for thought here, but you may have inadvertently saved yourself from future duplicate content penalties.

I would go one step further and setup the server to 301 redirect all requests for the non-www domain to the www version. There's probably a few thousand references of how to do this on the big 5 webmaster forums alone.

 

Its better if you just choose if you want to use with "www" or without "www" You can permanent redirect (lets say you want with www) the without "www" to www.yourdomain.com
Just create a .htaccess with notepad and paste this
----------
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
----------------

 

See example of my site if you want
pr-checker.net is redirected to www.pr-checker.net
using the code in .htaccess
-------
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^pr-checker.net [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.pr-checker.net/$1 [L,R=301]

My other site
Fastserp.com - I redirected the www.fastserp.com to fastserp.com.
Just use this code
------------
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.fastserp.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.fastserp.com/$1 [L,R=301]

 

But for the google all the index and bl traffic for www domain. For google both are different. So this cookies problem u can solved by script. And return to previous position.

 

I believe this to be incorrect, it will have no effect because it is simply redirecting a www request to a www address...(periods removed to prevent a hypertext link)

 

good post. thank you/

 

Upps.. sorry. Mistake
Should be redirected to with www or without www.
Make your choice.