www.domain.com vs domain.com

[gfriedm1]

One very common place to look for this error is on a site's homepage - oftentimes, a website will have the same content on http://www.url.com, http://url.com, and http://www.url.com/index.html. That separation alone can cause lost link value and severely damage rankings for the site's homepage. If you find many links outside the site pointing to both the non-www and the www version, it may be wise to use a 301 re-write rule to affect all pages at one so they point to the other.

I got that from a tutorial someone posted on SEOmoz.org.
http://www.seomoz.org/articles/bg4.php#4e

is this ture? does this mean that i should have a redirect on for when someone goes to domain.com, that it will automaticlly bring them to www.domain.com? the same true for www.domain.com/index.html?

[John Scott]

Yes, it's true. Pick a URL and stick with it.

[gfriedm1]

so should i be putting redirects on the domain.com to www.domain.com?

v7n.com and www.v7n.com are two different sites. one does not automatically redirect you to the other.

can that be counted as duplicate content?

[John Scott]

I could be, but I haven't had any issues with it yet.

It helps to use absolute URLs.

[Aviva]

You can just use mod rewrite to do this.

For instance, to create a .htaccess file that re-directs all non-www pages to www pages, use:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.avivadirectory.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.avivadirectory.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Obviously, change the site name to your own, otherwise you'll be redirecting your site to mine.

[gfriedm1]

now that would be a great way to get traffic. redirect everyone to your site!

so i guess what i am gathering, is that it is not hurting my site with duplicate content and there is just no need to do it.

how would i be able to tell if i was being penalized for dup content??

[Aviva]

Originally Posted by gfriedm1

now that would be a great way to get traffic. redirect everyone to your site!

so i guess what i am gathering, is that it is not hurting my site with duplicate content and there is just no need to do it.

how would i be able to tell if i was being penalized for dup content??

This might change your mind:
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/2817

[DotZero]

I don't think you will be penalised for duplicate content for having both www.example.com/some-page.html and example.com/some-page.html.

I have seen occurances where the same page had different page rank for both the www and the non-www version of the site, which is annoying seeing as you cannot control how people link to your website. That said, you should always been consistant in how you link to your website. Choose 1 method and stick to it.

Here is a little quote from matt cutts about url canonicalization

Q: What is a canonical url? Do you have to use such a weird word, anyway?
A: Sorry that it’s a strange word; that’s what we call it around Google. Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

* www.example.com
* example.com/
* www.example.com/index.html
* example.com/home.asp

But technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, we try to pick the url that seems like the best representative from that set.

To be on the safe side, and avoid confusing google, you may want to do a 302 redirect from the non-www to the www anyway.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by DotZero

To be on the safe side, and avoid confusing google, you may want to do a 302 redirect from the non-www to the www anyway.

Actually a 301 redirect is generally considered correct for this and as mentioned by Aviva, it is usually easiest to do with a mod rewrite.

[gfriedm1]

what is the difference between a 301 redirect, and a 302 redirect?

[Cricket]

See Here

301 is a permanent redirect
302 is a temporary redirect

Google recommends the use of a 301 redirect which can be accomplished with a mod rewrite for the situation we have been discussing.

[Aviva]

Originally Posted by Aviva

You can just use mod rewrite to do this.

For instance, to create a .htaccess file that re-directs all non-www pages to www pages, use:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.avivadirectory.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.avivadirectory.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Obviously, change the site name to your own, otherwise you'll be redirecting your site to mine.

Someone pointed out to me that the first line of code is unnecessary. That's right - sorry about that, I had it in there for something else.

[BingoBalls]

Great discussion folks and this is exactly what I was looking for with my new project - the V7 forum was my first place to check for the answer

[John Scott]

301 is the way to go.

[Manish Pandey]

I found a good tutorial on the mod_rewrite at http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ead.php?t=3925 hope you find it useful...

Manish