Difference between www and non-www site

[Geordieromer]

This post is deleted!

[TakeshiYoung]

Yes, it is a problem because Google sees www and non-www versions of your sites as different subdomains.

Putting the following code into your htaccess file should fix your problem:

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

[Robin_Jennings]

Something as simple as what Takeshi said will help your rankings immensely.

[JordanGodbey]

You can also go into Google WMT and set your preferred domain to be www or non-www to help them know which one you're trying to rank for.

Here's the WMT explanation of Preferred Domains - https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231

[RossFruin]

Hoping someone might have a response to my questions even though this post is fairly old. I am having a similar issue. We have both the www and non-www accounts in WMT. In both accounts we have set the preferred domain to the WWW version. Should I STILL place the code that Takeshi provided in the HTaccess file. If yes, can you explain why? Thanks!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Ross,

Google is pretty good today at figuring out that your site is both "www" and non-www, and they typically do a decent job of giving you credit for both versions.

In the old days (pre-2010) this wasn't always the case, and domain authority from one subdomain didn't always transfer well between the two versions, and this also caused a ton of duplicate content issues.

That said, it's still best practice to redirect your visitors (using 301 redirects) to one version or the other. (My first ever Whiteboard Friday touched on this issue

By doing so, you ensure that link equity is preserved throughout your site and you eliminate the duplicate content issues that result when two subdomain both resolve. Usually, a simple .htaccess file like the one listed above will do the trick.