2 sets of stats for same site

[cjkimber]

Somehow on OSE I managed to get two different sets of results appear for my page. The column on the left (PA 34) is for mysite.com/ and the second column is for www.mysite.com/ .Note that these are the same site. Why do i have two different sets of results ?(note some things are the same such as google +1 & FB likes)Im concerned ive done something wrong and could have a bigger beast with both sets of results merged together.

Any help much appreciated.

Chris

QFNeGh7

[KeriMorgret]

One is looking at the root domain, and one is looking at the subdomain of www. I'm sorry I don't have a link handy for you right now (not feeling the greatest), but in short it's looking at metrics pointing to domain.com versus www.domain.com

[cjkimber]

can anyone explain this in a little more detail and how I can rectify it?

[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

Basically, "www." is a subdomain like any other - it's just a subdomain named "www."  and happens to be extremely common due largely to tradition and the set-up of most content management systems. Instead of being named "uk." or "en." (like at Wikipedia), "help.", "analytics." (in analytics.moz.com), etc., it's called www.

The screenshot example would be easier to make sense of if you were comparing the domain http://yoursite.com/ and a subdomain like http://blog.yoursite.com/ - the first shows the authority pointing to your domain's root. The second shows only the blog subdomain's authority. This is the same thing, but with "blog" replacing "www".

It looks here like there is a split between how many incoming links you have to the root and the www. That is, links point to both "versions". If you try to load http://www.yoursite.com and http://yoursite.com/, do both pages load with the same content? If so, one either needs to 301 redirect to the other, or you need to place the canonical tag on the version you do not wish to be indexed and well-ranked, pointing to the other.

If you do not do this, Google finds two versions of the same page (or entire site, if ALL your pages load twice, once with www and once without). Both versions have inbound links, so Google doesn't know which one is meant to be the boss. Worst case scenario is that it ranks both versions poorly as a result, so either redirection from the non-preferred version to the preferred version, or canonicalisation, are the way to go.

You can also set your preferred domain in Webmaster Tools under Settings (see screenshot): http://i.imgur.com/sgrvPKo.png

This may be all basic to you, but hopefully it helps explain why there are two sets of numbers between the "root" and the "same" URL with www. attached. Let me know if this isn't clear.

Best,

Jane