Hi All, From a Rankings/SEO perspective, does it matter if you include the www in your domain name? I would rather exclude it from my name, but I fear sites will automatically link to www.example.com. If I use a 301 redirect, does it avoid this problem and still count the links for SEO? Thanks!
Do both. It is and should be given that www is (with or without) the same. Anyone that is not mapping both via DNS and or a 301 re-direct is just being lazy, and sloppy. Case in point. I am too damn lazy to type www in the address field of my browser. You would be surpised how many sites out there only have www.domain.com configured, and not domain.com. I guess I just don't visit those sites. So, create an A record for domainname.com. then a cname for www pointing to domainname.com. then create a vhost for domainname.com and vhost with a 301 redirect for www.domainname.com and you are covered on all fronts. IMO, this is and should be standard practice. My copy of "DNS and BIND" is so old, I have no idea if things have changed. I am still following the RFC's as they originally were.
Mia, I'm not sure if I know how to do all that you suggested. What I have done is add: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*) http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301] to my .htaccess file. This seems to work well. It redirects users who enter http://www.example.com/about --> http://example.com/about. Using the above code in my .htaccess file will NOT have NEG effect on my SEO efforts, correct? Thanks for your response.
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301] Code (markup): Or you could do something as simple as a meta refresh: <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.new.com/new.htm"> <TITLE>Page has moved</TITLE> </HEAD> Code (markup): To answer your question, no, using the re-direct will not have a negative affect on you. Some SE's may view www and domain.com as dup content. The only bad affect you may see is if www.domain.com and domain.com were both indexed, as two different sites, the consoldation of the two from the SE's point of view may reduce your overall number of indexed pages. In the end, what you are doing looks to be correct.
Before I made this fix today, both the www version and non-www version were accessable. I had a few dozen pages indexed before, but now the only page indexed in google is my homepage. How long does it take to recover from this mistake?
Do keep in mind that Google is in the midst of some type of update of some kind, the likes we have never seen before.
Just did this fix on one of my sites about two months ago and it took less than a month to correct. Just be sure to get deep links in the meantime so g will recrawl those pages sooner.
Thanks for the help guys. I think my troubles are likely due to these google problems Mia is referring to.
include it, www.example.com is the correct way, even google does so, if you go to google.com you get 301 redirect to www.google.com
some days back i read a website called no-www.org.... In that, they ask us not to use the www. in domain names. it was a good interesting read. just check that out.. http://no-www.org/index.php anyway...a 301 redirect can be done either from www. to non-www and vice versa and if properly done, i believe there is no reason to be afraid of search engines... regards, deepak
The technically inclined understand that the www is often unnecessary, but I think most people expect to see the w's. Here's something to think about: When I am posting a link to somebody's domain I'm usually too lazy to go and look at the site just to see if they prefer to leave off the "www" so by default I put the "www" in there.
Right. But technically, with the 302 redirect, the www or non-www link to my page should generate the same page rank for my site. Correct?
imo reditre www-less to www.domain.com using code (mia's first) thru htaccess file and using 301 redirect.
IMO..i would first check out which one is cached by google...which version of the domain has more backlinks...etc...and then redirect the other to one that has more advantages....although i would prefer non-www to www version... regards, deepak
The main thing is ranking problem what i think, will arise in this. If both of your www. or without www domain index in Google, It will treat that as two similar websites and one can be gone for SPAM case. First of all you should check all your links. how Google is picking without www. domain ? It might be due to your linking method. I think you must have used link somewhere without www in your or your partner website. If it is the problem, just correct it. then you dont need to worry. Whether your www or without www domain is indexing, that should be only one unique on the net. Thanks_
yes...the redirection code will be in your .htaccess file....have a backup of your old htaccess file ...and then add the codes....in case..if something goes wrong..you have your old file to fall onto...