301 redirects=> website vs "www" website

Do you guys think a 301 redirect is necessary anymore? I've read both sides which say that if you have a site with "www" and without, it will not make any difference in SEO. How the heck does this happen anyway? I thought all websites started with www!

the websites without and with www are seen as two different websites, even if it is only one

you have to choose one version and redirect the other to it

this will avoid any duplicate content

www.mysite.com is NOT the same as mysite.com
so you need to choose one or the other...


I add some code to .htaccess
I add this code
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.your_domain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.your_domain.com/$1 [R=301]

Which would you guys suggest I keep as the "real" website? www? also, will I have to reconfigure all my google webmaster accts, google place pages accts, etc or will they fix themselves due to the redirect?

THANKS AGAIN!!!

I personally use the www.mysite.com only because it looks better on the address bar when people are on my site....

but I hear some people use the mysite.com ....
Google wise... it does not matter... choose one and google will align all the links to that one...

I usually promote my own sites without the www. It's just a preference, but to me www is just a throwback to when they were trying to promote people to use the world wide web. The internet is pretty entrenched in peoples lives today so it's really of no real use now. It saves a few characters when you're telling people about your site or making backlinks, so I personally think it looks better to leave the www off. Whichever way you go with (www or non-www) just depends on your personal preference.

As far as whether you should make a decision or not, definitely you should make the decision and set your site up accordingly.
Here's a video from GoogleWebmasterHelp that's worth watching. Part of it discusses some of the myths regarding duplicate content and explains exactly the topic your asking about. It goes into some specifics regarding how to use the "canonical" tag to solve that problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hSoXutuj0g&feature=channel

Here's a couple other threads regarding similar topic.
Canonical
Redirection (301) - Htaccess Tutorial

It's kind of hard to find the best threads about redirects because the bhw search function considers 301 too short a term. But if you go to the Advanced Search and do a search for Keyword(s): redirects, User Name: greywolf, and Show Results as: Posts. You'll find some of my previous posts about redirects and in several of them I give many links to other previous threads about 301 redirects.

You can also try redirection redirect redirects redirections etc. With and without the by user selected. Do that and you can find a lot of other threads on this same topic giving additional info you can use.

It doesn't mater which form you use, with or without the www, you just need to be consisted for each site. E.g, make sure that your internal and external links all use one form or the other, otherwise your page rank &authority gets diluted.

The htaccess serves as sort of a safety net for any inconsistency by funneling link juice to one set of pages.

Thanks. I found out that I am on a Windows box and I cannot use the htaccess method, they (godaddy) suggested I insert a asp. method- Do I place the asp script in notepad and upload to the server or do I put it in the html?

sandiegodude said:

Thanks. I found out that I am on a Windows box and I cannot use the htaccess method, they (godaddy) suggested I insert a asp. method- Do I place the asp script in notepad and upload to the server or do I put it in the html?

Click to expand...

this is another reason godaddy sucks.

I read somewhere IM people use the non www if they have a good domain name. They then usually capitalize each word like MyDomain.com as if the domain is good.. it could look better then http://www.MyDomain.com for example. Also I don't think you can capitalize letters on a www and keep them there. ideally im wrong

Well that just blows me out of the water!!! I've been correcting all my backlinks to the www <WITH> caps in my domain!! SCHIT SCHIT SCHIT

www is technically a sub-domain isn't it?

They're seen as seperate entities in the search engine's eyes so pick one and stick with it. My preference is to use www because that is the way that people will generally link to you. Might as well work to the common denominator.

Finally some good news!
Thanks!

From my personal experience I have sites without www. that rank wayy better than the ones with the www.