To be www. or not to be www.

This kind of ties into the last thread referring to an "amazingly useful tool': http://www.uptimebot.com/



When I enter my URL with the www. and without the www I get different results on pretty much each search engine. And it's not consistent either, sometime with the www. I get a higher Back Links number and sometime without the www I get a higher number.



I have also noticed that on some domains the google page rank is higher with the www or sometimes higher without the www. What is the deal with this? Will Google ever spend the time to fix this? Or does it really matter as far as getting your keywords ranked high on the SERP's? Meaning Google knows what your domains PR is with or without the www so it doesn't really matter?



Any insights or comments?

there is nothing to fix.
these two urls are seen as separate pages by google.
therefore...each have their own pagerank.

what needs to be 'fixed' is you need to avoid using the www-less version for any references to your site.
that way...all...or at least the majority of the pagerank will properly get to the www address.

While you are right I always try and get other web sites to link back to my domains with the www in the url. Often times we have no control over how someone links back to you.

I just feel like that since the domain is the same with or without the www in the url it should be treated the same on Google and the other SE's.

But this still doesn't answer my most pending question: Does this affect your keyword rankings on the SERP's if say your www version has a PR5 and the non www version has a PR3 (just an example)?

Oh and how do I get upped to Zoolie status .... !

you will also find that "www.yourdomain.com/index.html" will also yield yet another page identity and separate pagerank fo r essentially the exact same page.

:grin:

[zoolie status: keep posting and play nice.]

hi dantem,

I do not know if anybody does it, but it is possible to host to different sites on the www.domain.com and domain.com, after all www is just another sub domain.

Also,

This strategy might have worked more in the past versus today but trying to get websites about keyword 1 (in the title tag) to link to domainhere.com with the KW anchor text 1 and then getting websites about keyword 2 (in the title tag) to link to www.domainhere.com with keyword 2 anchor text,



Any ideas if this would still be a valid seo strategy or should be avoided now?



Should you just focus your main index.hm page on a narrow set of keywords and use you sub pages to focus on others?

that is really not a good idea.
you can accomplish the same thing [in a much easier way] by simply creating 2 pages...
"www.yourdomain.com/lollipops.html"
"www.yourdomain.com/gumdrops.html"

all you are going to do is confuse people with the method you suggested above.

Hi,

Maybe the best strategy would be to redirect all the traffic to domain.com to www.domain.con. That way if anyone puts up a link to domain.com you would still benefit fully from it.

I always use www.domain.com.

This is something that has always confused me. With my sites I always get the same PR, backlinks, listings, everything no matter whether I put in
www*co.uk
.co.uk
www*co.uk/index.html
.co.uk/index.html

I don't understand why some people get different results, shouldn't all of these resolve to the same site and server?

Perhaps somone could enlighten me?

Hi thewormman,

Maybe it has something to do with the setup of your hosting?

if you redirected traffic from domain.com to www.domain.com, would this make google classify your site as one?

i'm not sure if that really comes out as clear but to my understanding, right now, this person has separate pageranks for domain.com and www.domain.com but if all backlinks pointed to www.domain.com, then pagerank for that site might be higher. so i'm just wondering if google will see the site as one site if domain.com redirects to www.domain.com.