I'm confused by the following. All of my link building has been done like this: http://www. mysite.com (without space obviously!), however when I check to see how many backlinks I have it displays as a low number, however if I check by just using mysite.com then I have ten times as many backlinks. Why is this? I'm worried that this will affect my site as when I check the future page rank prediction http://www. mysite.com indicates a low pr4 whereas mysite.com indicates a reasonably good pr5. Any thoughts are appreciated.
This is a canonicalization issue with google. Use the following code in a .htaccess file to redirect all versions of your site to the right place. RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php3\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.php3$ http://www.domain.co.uk [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] Code (markup): Replace the domain.co.uk and index.php3 as appropriate and post again if you need help.
Thanks for the reply. I have a .htaccess file already which has this in it: # -FrontPage- IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti* <Limit GET POST> order deny,allow deny from all allow from all </Limit> <Limit PUT DELETE> order deny,allow deny from all </Limit> php_flag session.use_trans_sid off RewriteEngine On #RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} . #RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC] #RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R,L] RewriteRule ^profile\/([^\/]+)/([0-9]+) publicprofile.php?name=$1&id=$2 RewriteRule ^Category\/[^\/]+/([0-9]+) index.php?catid=$1&mode=category RewriteRule ^Article/[^\/]+/([0-9]+)/?(.*) article.php?id=$1&act=$2 RewriteRule ^rss/[^\/]+/([0-9]+) rssarticle.php?id=$1 RewriteRule ^myarticles/(.*)$ index.php?mode=myarticles RewriteRule ^(.*)topauthorslist/ topauthors.php?orderby=$1&ordertype=$2&namelike=$3&page=$4 RewriteRule ^(.*)popularlist/ populararticles.php?page=$2 RewriteRule ^(.*)searchresult/ indexser.php?page=$2 Code (markup): Should I add the code you've suggested to the end of it or is there any code in there already that would need removing? Thanks again for your help.
There are 3 lines commented out in your file, replace the following: #RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} . #RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC] #RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R,L] Code (markup): with the code I posted and then test it quickly, if it won't work or gives errors then change it back quickly.
Ok, my site seems to work fine still. The .htaccess file now looks like this: # -FrontPage- IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti* <Limit GET POST> order deny,allow deny from all allow from all </Limit> <Limit PUT DELETE> order deny,allow deny from all </Limit> php_flag session.use_trans_sid off RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.php3$ http://www.articleblotter.com [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^articleblotter.com RewriteRule (.*) http://www.articleblotter.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^profile\/([^\/]+)/([0-9]+) publicprofile.php?name=$1&id=$2 RewriteRule ^Category\/[^\/]+/([0-9]+) index.php?catid=$1&mode=category RewriteRule ^Article/[^\/]+/([0-9]+)/?(.*) article.php?id=$1&act=$2 RewriteRule ^rss/[^\/]+/([0-9]+) rssarticle.php?id=$1 RewriteRule ^myarticles/(.*)$ index.php?mode=myarticles RewriteRule ^(.*)topauthorslist/ topauthors.php?orderby=$1&ordertype=$2&namelike=$3&page=$4 RewriteRule ^(.*)popularlist/ populararticles.php?page=$2 RewriteRule ^(.*)searchresult/ indexser.php?page=$2 Code (markup): I'm using iwebtool to check my backlinks by the way, but doing a quick check still shows the same results. Does it take a while for this to take effect. Doing a quick check on iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction will show you what I mean if you type in articleblotter.com and www. articleblotter.com. Also, i guess the index.php page is just the homepage of my site? Sorry if these questions seem dumb! Thanks for your help.
This will take a few days/weeks for google to sort itself out/ It will need to spider your site a couple of times to register the new information. If your site is index.php rather than index.php3 then there is still a php3 that you need to alter to say php in the code you posted.
Thanks for your help, just noticed the php3 . I'd been putting off link building for the last couple of days as I didn't want to waste my time linking to a url that wasn't counting to my site backlinks, but hopefully this will be sorted shortly. Thanks for taking the time to help. Just another quick question, are all links that point to articleblotter.com, www. articleblotter.com, and http://www. articleblotter.com, now all contributing to the http://www. articleblotter.com that i've been wanting to build links too, or do they for some reason not count as backlinks and not pass page rank for some reason? Probably a stupid question, but wanted to find out if all links that i've built up so far are going to count towards the http://www. version of my url? I appreciate your help.
All of the links will now redirect to the proper place so you should get a PR boost from this. Good luck.
Great, thanks for your help, that's the second time someone from Nottingham has helped me a lot this week, and strangely enough I live about an hour away from there. It's a small world online! Thanks for helping.