Help with domain.com & www.domain.com

Hello,

This is a perennial question, but I need help understanding how search engines treat "mydomain dot com" & "www dot mydomain dot com".

I'm working on site where "www dot mydomain dot com" is forwarded automatically to "mydomain dot com". Google shows the same PR for both, however Yahoo shows 100s of pages and 2 links for "mydomain dot com" and 100s of links and 2 pages for "www dot mydomain dot com".

Also a look at SEOChat's URL Redirect Check tool shows that ""www dot mydomain dot com" is NOT REDIRECTING to any URL or the redirect is NOT SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY."

There is no good reason really why "www dot mydomain dot com" is being forwarded to "mydomain dot com".
Which is better:
- having "www dot mydomain dot com" forwarding to "mydomain dot com"
- having "mydomain dot com" forwarding to "www dot mydomain dot com"
- or having no forwarding at all with both "mydomain dot com" and "www dot mydomain dot com" displaying the website?

The site has established rankings, so I don't want to mess with them either,

Thanks,
Jeremy

Do both sites have unique content? If they do then you should just let them run side by side with links going back and forth, no redirects. If you can't think of a good reason for one to direct visitors automatically then don't do it.

If they are not unique and have the same content then pick the site with the best layout and URL, then have a 301 redirect going to that site from the other one.

@ Federale - I think you missed the point slightly - There is only one website.

@ jeremymgp - First of all, it makes no difference which way you do it, just choose one and stick with it.

As for "How search engines treat" this issue - well Google say they have solved canonical issues, but from time to time it becomes obvious that this is not completely true, thus a permanent redirect (rule) is the best option (provided that it works correctly)!

Having them both working independantly can dilute the effect of your incoming links and thus (adverseley) affect your rankings. It could conceivably also result in dup' content problems, but I think this is the part of the issue that Google have "solved".

If the site is on an Apache server the redirect is simply this (included in your domain root .htaccess file):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Hi Federale & ClickyB,

Thanks for your help, yes there is just the one site with a forward from "www dot mydomain dot com" to "mydomain dot com".

I also thought that search engines were capable of seeing both domains as the same site no problem, just feels unusual forwarding from the www domain and not to it. Thanks again

Cheers,
Jeremy