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Something Cool, www and non-www, Two Different Sites

by Marvin Johnston
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hopefully most people here are aware that www.website.com and website.com are two different sites. Most of the time, we want to 301 redirect one to the other so the same site comes up regardless if www is used or not.

Today, I installed a new WordPress installation over another standard site I was using for testing purposes. I used the GoDaddy interface to install WP, and all went well.

In looking at the admin panel, I saw the WP site was website.com. So just to check it out, I put in www.website.com in the URL box. Lo and Behold, it was my old test website.

So my question is if anyone here has actually used this "feature" to use the "same" website for two different purposes?

I can see where it could be confusing to visitors, but it is something cool to play with!

Marvin
#cool #nonwww #sites #www
  • Profile picture of the author Michael Mayo
    If you created the test site and Google indexed it then the www. was used by default
    by Google.

    When you typed in the address without the www. it wasn't in googles index so Google
    actually checked and found the url and returned the new results.

    In a few days they will both look like the new site after Google re-indexes it.

    It's just a Time delay. It won't last very long before it is corrected.

    Been there, Done that and nearly wrote an ebook about it but no wanted
    the darn thing...lol :rolleyes:

    Have a Great Day!
    Michael
    PS, They are actually two different site urls so make sure when you get Back Links that you choose one or the other before you do. That's where the 301 redirect comes in handy!
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Banks
      Definitely recommend doing a redirect to send visitors to one or the other and so google knows only to index one.

      Also I am pretty sure wordpress automatically does the redirect.
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    • Profile picture of the author Marvin Johnston
      Originally Posted by Michael Mayo View Post

      If you created the test site and Google indexed it then the www. was used by default
      by Google.

      When you typed in the address without the www. it wasn't in googles index so Google
      actually checked and found the url and returned the new results.

      In a few days they will both look like the new site after Google re-indexes it.
      Actually, I had redirected the non-www. to the www website using .htaccess a long time ago. It was only after the installation of WP by GoDaddy that things changed.


      It's just a Time delay. It won't last very long before it is corrected.

      Been there, Done that and nearly wrote an ebook about it but no wanted
      the darn thing...lol :rolleyes:
      Well, I'm going to leave it this way for a while before I move the website contents to this domain. Something else to spend some time on .

      I don't think this is a google issue though since google only affects the search results. I had (have?) a robots.txt to tell the search engines not to index anything except the main page.

      Marvin

      P.S. I won't do any backlinking until I'm happy with the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author dadamson
    The major problem with having two different versions of your site is that the backlinks are watered down between each URL.

    I recommend going into your hosting account and setting up a 301 redirect so that your www version automatically redirects visitors and backlinks to the non-www version (or vice verser).

    Cheers,
    Dave
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