Duplicate Content based on www.www

[CredA]

In trying to knock down the most common errors on our site, we've noticed we do have an issue with dupicate content; however, most of the duplicate content errors are due to our site being indexed with www.www and not just www.

I am perplexed as to how this is happening.  Searching through IIS, I see nothing that would be causing this, and we have no hostname records setup that are www.www.

Does anyone know of  any other things that may cause this and how we can go about remedying it?

[SanketPatel]

Hi

If your sit is opened with or without WWW then obviously Google consider both different site and duplicate content. This will solve by setting rel="canonical" . 301 redirect is best option because it will transfer your back-links, page-rank and linkjuce so it is safe way of redirect URL. Upload  .htaccess. file in your FTP server it helps you to solve this problem.

[CredA]

Thanks Sanket, your reply makes total sense and I would apply it if I could figure out how the extra www ( www.www ) is even happening.  Wouldn't I have to know that first in order to implement the redirect?

In IIS I don't see where the extra www.www is setup (what directory)

If I could find it, it seems I could just create a .htaccess file with the code below:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.www.domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Would that could be right?

I'm still digging on where the extra forward to www.www is happening.

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Sanket,

The person asking the question is on IIS, so an .htaccess file won't help.

[KeriMorgret]

Are you running IIS6 or IIS7? Things are a little different for each of them. If you let us know what version of IIS you're running, we'll look up the proper configuration for you.

[CredA]

Hi Keri - it is IIS6

[KeriMorgret]

I haven't done this in a long time, but I used ISAPI Rewrite, and did what is talked about in this thread at http://www.webmasterworld.com/microsoft_asp_net/3951672.htm. An alternate method is discussed at http://www.stepforth.com/resources/web-marketing-knowledgebase/non-www-redirect/#microsoft. Hope this helps you get started!

[CredA]

Thanks Keri - yes I have ISAPI Rewrite installed.

I will go that route and give it a shot.

[CredA]

Just a thanks again!  I modded ISAPI Rewrite and resolved the problem thanks to your tip.

FYI in case anyone else needs it, here is the mod I did:

#redirecting www.www.domain.com to www.domain.com also redirect the net and org #RewriteCond  Host:  www.www.domainname.(com|net|org)
#RewriteRule  (.*)  http://domainname.com$2 [R]