www.Domain.com or Domain.com

[jayveen]

I started seeing my sites listed high on google as mydomain.com whereas other sites were listed usually as www.mydomain.com. So I went into WP settings and changed the website name from mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com.

Now I've noticed that a couple of the domains have fallen off of google completely, and when I use the Rank Checker firefox plugin, the sites' rankings depend upon whether I specify mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com. I really don't understand this at all. Shouldn't google be smart enough to understand that either way its the same domain? Can just changing the name in WP really affect SERPs that badly?

Thanks for any information about SERPs and domain name formats.

[acedalright]

There is no way the change you have made has affected your rankings. Have you done anything else?

Too much link building, or some other factor?

[lanta99]

Take a look at this post on Google:

Preferred domain (www or non-www) - Webmasters/Site owners Help

If you see a message that your site is not indexed, it may be because it is indexed under a different domain. For example, if you receive a message that Example Web Page is not indexed, make sure that you've also added Example Web Page to your account (or vice versa), and check the data for that site.

[Elliott]

Jayveen, you may have created yourself a "canonical url" problem.

This post by Chris Sutton is from a thread called "What Is A Canonical URL? Very Important!" which I found in the WarRoom, but I think it was copied to there. You may be able to use Search to find it in the main discussion or elsewhere. Actually, I think it is from the"old forum"
Elliott

Chris W. Sutton
<SMALL>Advanced Warrior</SMALL>


<SMALL>USA</SMALL>
<SMALL>1628 Posts</SMALL>
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As most of you know, sampledomain.com and www.sampledomain.com will send you to the same website. Therefore, a lot of people don't worry about which one is used...but you should! This could be a canonical URL. Here are some examples of a canonical URL...

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


By not worrying about which one is used, you can hurt yourself in the search engine rankings. Let me tell you how that works.

A search engine will sometimes look at sampledomain.com and www.sampledomain.com as two different websites. The search engines have tried to compensate for this fact but it doesn't always work.

If you domain name is listed as different sites for the www. and non-www. sites your first problem will be with duplicate content. Since the search engines see the site as two different sites with exact content, you could be penalized in the rankings.

The other main problem is with your incoming backlinks. If you domain name is listed as different sites and you have some backlinks going to the www.sampledomain.coma and some going to sampledomain.com, it is splitting the number of backlinks. In other words, you could have 40 backlinks going to one site and 35 backlinks going to the other site instead of 75 backlinks going to your ONE site! Google, especially, puts a lot of emphasis on backlinks so you would probably be hurt in your Google rankings!

How do you know if you have the same site listed in two different places? Go to Google.com and do a search for site:sampledomain.com replacing the sampledomain.com with your own URL. This will show you every instance of your websites indexing. If you find both versions, www.sampledomain.com and sampledomain.com, then you probably have a problem.

After you have done that, go back to Google and, once again, type in site:sampledomain.com and look at the number of results in the top right corner. Then, go back to Google and do a search for the domain name with the "www" in it, i.e., site:www.sampledomain.com and check the results in the upper right hand corner. If there is very much difference between the results for each domain name, that also tells you that you have a problem with a canonical URL.

What can you do about this? The simplest way would be to use a 301 redirect on the non-www domain name and direct it to the domain name that has the "www."

I hope I didn't confuse you with all that info but you definitely should see if you have a canonical URL problem. I found problems when I checked several of my domain names.

What is a "301 redirect" and why should you care about it? Well, that is a whole different post!

[Istvan Horvath]

Originally Posted by jayveen

I really don't understand this at all. Shouldn't google be smart enough to understand that either way its the same domain?

Actually, they are NOT the same domain!
One is a domain (example.com) and the other is the "www" subdomain on the example.com domain. And yes, G. is smart enough to know that they are not the same.

So, if the big G. ever indexes your site in one way or the other - NEVER change it!

[Jhf14]

many of my domains go to "domain.com" instead of the www part... make sure that if you use Google Webmaster tools you write your URL without the www

[Online Bliss]

So, if the big G. ever indexes your site in one way or the other - NEVER change it

I agree, If it works don't fix it.

I could write a boring list of how Google has irritated me, but I am tired.

[jayveen]

Originally Posted by Online Bliss

I agree, If it works don't fix it.

I could write a boring list of how Google has irritated me, but I am tired.

Thanks everybody. When I saw my Google listings under domain.com I thought they were wrong and should be www.domain.com. Sigh. The only change I made was to the WP settings, so now I'll go back and change them to domain.com again, but I actually thought that surfers would rather see the www.domain.com style, because thats what usually shows up. Oh well.

[Smokey_Joe]

Jayveen - I before changing anything again, you had better follow the steps suggested by Elliott, it's the only way out of this tangle.

[Stella_Roberts]

There are no SEO differences between www domain and non www domain address as far as I know. But search engines will treat both the domains as different which could create some problems as far as the seo values of the sites is concerned. As the seo values would be shared between the 2 different domains. So, it is better advised to have a permanent redirect to the www domain.

[askloz]

actually, the changes he made were an affect of the changes in rank.

non-www sites rank higher than www sites.

"www" is a known phrase, thus in Google's big book of phrases to rank, while others, "stop words" such as: if, as, and, I, etc, etc are bolded and not hyperlinked.

non-www and a www are classed as two different sites / pages.

Personally the OP should just put it back to non-www.

Originally Posted by acedalright

There is no way the change you have made has affected your rankings. Have you done anything else?

Too much link building, or some other factor?

[nettech]

Im sure there is a setting in Google Webmaster Tools that allows you to tell Google that www and domain.com are the same thing!

[flobaby]

I put this in the .htaccess file of every website I make and upload it first thing. This means there's always a www before the URL, eliminating any confusion. (this is the redirect Elliot mentioned in his post)

rewriteEngine on
rewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mywebsite\.com
rewriteRule (.*) http://www.mywebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[adalf]

search engines normally treat the www / non www as different domains, unless you use tools to pick which you prefer. It is important if you use www or not use www in your link building, you should pick one and stick with it for best effect, unless you are using webmaster tools.