Root domain registered in search engines, inbound links to www sub-domain. A problem?

[honestabejosh]

I just discovered that our site is registered with the major search engines without the "www" sub domain.  Both domains resolve directly to our site, which I need to get corrected.  I had planned to have the root (honestabe.com) forwarded to the sub (www.honestabe.com).  However, I then found that the sub-domain is not listed with the search engines.

Of course, naturally almost all of our inbound links include www.  Does Google differentiate between links with and without the sub-domain? In other words, if I forward the www address to the root, will I still get the SEO benefit of those inbound links using www?

I'm trying to figure out how to approach this.  I'm hoping someone is going to make me feel really stupid for asking this and say it's no big deal.  However, I have a feeling this could be a mess.

[AlanMosley]

I prefer the non www, as www is not nesasary, but that aside.

Yes they do differentiate

just 301 redirect one to the other, and you will be ok.

[honestabejosh]

Thanks for the quick reply Alan.  The redirect to the root is what would work best in my situation, but I was concerned that I would loose the influence of inbound links to the www being redirected.  I'm hoping this shouldn't be a concern?

[gfiorelli1]

Doing a search with www.honestbabe.com Google revolves with this serps: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=www.honestabe.com&pws=0&pbx=1&oq=www.honestabe.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1345l1345l0l1954l1l1l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=9441c9e3bb40875d&biw=1920&bih=955

As you can see from the sitelinks, Google has picked up some urls with www. and some without. This is surely caused by the fact that both versions are crawlable.

The best thing to do is to redirect 301 the root domain name to the subdomain www.honestbabe.com, if this is the version of the site that owns the highest % of backlinks

That way Google (and users) will be redirected always to the www. version and index just that one. Don't worry about the backlinks eventually existing and linking to the not www. site, because the link juice from those links will pass almost entirely to the www. linked page version.

Previously today I answered to a similar question: http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-joomla

I suggest you to check it, also because there's the code you have to add to your .htacces file (if you are running on a apache linux enviroment).

[AlanMosley]

no its not, you do lose a little from 301 redirect but very little

[Blenny]

Hey Josh,

Goog does differentiate the two in terms of applying link juice, but unless for some reason they deliver different content, it's not a major problem. My website has had this issue for awhile due to issues with our CMS system. There is an easy fix though. Try incorporating the rel canonical tag into your pages. Lots of great write-ups on SEOMoz and elsewhere on the usefulness of this tag - essentially tells Google which version of the url to credit the link juice and to keep in its index.

Then, as you said, I would change the internal link structure to reflect the "www" or "non-www" dependent on which one has the most links (Keep the one most people have linked to determined by a OpenSiteExplorer report from SEOMoz) so as to maintain consistency from that point forward.  Ideally, you'd be able to 301 the less-linked version to the other since you lose a fraction of link juice with a 301.

Done correctly, you may actually gain engine authority since both non-www and www versions would "funnel" all of their link juice together.

Good luck!

[honestabejosh]

Great feedback.  Thank you Gianluca!

[honestabejosh]

Thank you for taking the time to write this up Blenny.  I think this will also help with my duplicate page content issue.  Most appreciated sir.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

I just recently realized Google was indexing both www and non-www.  I changed the settings in Google WM Tools and put in the 301 redirect to www.  That was a couple weeks ago.  Google is still showing non-www even though www has a higher PR.  About how long will it take for Google to switch over to www, or is there something else I may need to correct?

Best,
Christopher