www or not

[boron]

It's an ongoing topic...

One who uses SEO tools a lot , has surely noticed that some sites with www "doesn't exist. Even http://yahoo.com !

If you put a "bare" domain in some tool it won't find anything. The message will be something like: "this domain was deleted permanently". I checked backlinks with http://backlinkwatch.com for one site: www has 33 links, no-www has 1.

[Submerge]

Yea, it's becoming a new trend of redirecting traffic to the www subdomain (if you may call it that). Look at PR, it uses to different PR's for basically the same site, might as well force all PRs to point at the same domain.

[boron]

From what I've read now, it seems it's not important if you have www. or not, but that you make all your backlinks either with www. or without www. so you'll get all backlinks on one domain.

www.domain.com and domain.com are two different sites from the SE point.

[Reckless]

From what I've read now, it seems it's not important if you have www. or not, but that you make all your backlinks either with www. or without www. so you'll get all backlinks on one domain.

www.domain.com and domain.com are two different sites from the SE point.

that right, you can redirect your domain with a 301 Redirect

add these codes to your .htaccess file

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

[boron]

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

Should this work in all cases? There were some disputs on DP that the code doesn't work for some people. One problem was about the "$1" part toward the end of the last line.

[Reckless]

Should this work in all cases? There were some disputs on DP that the code doesn't work for some people. One problem was about the "$1" part toward the end of the last line.

dont really know, i don't know much about .htaccess...

btw you can also change something in your google webmaster tools, so that google knows which one u use

[Submerge]

dont really know, i don't know much about .htaccess...

btw you can also change something in your google webmaster tools, so that google knows which one u use

Yes, they have it in the webmaster tools area for every domain you can select which Google should use.

[boron]

One reason to use www. : When someone likes your site, he might copy the link from the search line and put it somewhere to show it to others. This will be a backlink and it will probably be www. So, to prevent spliting PR among www an non www site, using www can be a good idea. I can't imagine any other cause which make www so popular again.

[boron]

Yes, they have it in the webmaster tools area for every domain you can select which Google should use.

The place in Google where you can say which is your prefered site is here (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=44232). You have to put their code on your site. If you don't want to do this, you still can use .htaccess rewrite.

My question:
What is the code for www to non-www redirect AND
what for non-www to www redirect?

[Mystic]

Yes, I have instructed google to use www. using their webmaster tools.
I would recomend that you also do so .

[boron]

I have some doubts to use their codes on my site and this especcialy applies when I want to make a redirect a site of someone other. Someone will simply don't want to have anythinge Google's on his site. But it's the simplest way I guess.

www to no-www redirect can be done this way (as said above):
Put the below code in .htaccess file

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]


no-www to www redirect:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

[Whitey]

It depends on the situation really...


I like using the www subdomain on most of my sites. However, there are some (especially vhosts) that I don't use it on. I play it by ear :).



- Whitey

[Arthur07]

I absoutely hate when websites don't work if you don't include the www. :P. I am normally to lazy to muster those extra w's.

[Submerge]

Same, I hate being redirected. If your going to make the www be the only accessible one, make it an instant redirect. But I'd rather use the www sub domain rather than no sub domain. My preference.