Www2 vs www problem

[TihomirPetrov]

Hi,

I have a website that has an old version and a new version. The content is not duplicate on the different versions.
The point is that the old version uses www. and non-www before the domain and the new one uses www2.

My questions is: Is that a problem and what should be done?

Thank you in advance!

[Bonx]

Hi there Tihomir,

Although the www to www2 differs the .domain.com will still be the same, this will be seen as a duplicate domain in a way by Google or any other search engine. And will definitely damage ranking of your site.

So the best thing to do here is to remove the old site completely or just edit it so that google cant crawl the site if it is a necessity to have the old one live.

Hope this helps

[Alex-Harford]

Do you still need the old domain? If not you should make the new website reside at www. or non-www.

Imagine telling people your URL "it's at www2.example.com" - most people don't know anything other than www. so it could cause confusion.

Also, if you have the same content residing at the www. and non-www. versions of your website, the two versions will be conisdered duplicate content so you should make sure only one exists.

[TihomirPetrov]

Thanks for the response Alex and Rickus,

The point is that the website have three main categories. Two of them had been facelifted and moved to www2.domain.dk. Their tabs on www.domain.dk redirect to www2. The point is that on the www.domain.dk left the first category which is still not redesigned.
So, we basically can't remove any of these 3 categories - we end up with one category on the www & non-www version and with two categories on the www2 version.

[TihomirPetrov]

Thanks a lot Rickus,

I answered together with Alex's answer

[JaneCopland]

Hi Tihomir,

Are you planning to give the remaining category a facelift too?

It would be best to include all three categories under the same subdomain (e.g. the "www." subdomain) and place them in folders, e.g. www.domain.dk/category1, www.domain.dk/category2 and www.domain.dk/category3. www2 isn't technically damaging but it's bad from a usability point of view. It's incredibly unlikely to be remembered, for one, and even more likely to be mistyped as www.

[TihomirPetrov]

Hi Jane,

Thanks for the comment.

The point is that the company, that possesses the website, want for now to leave the old design for this category and move the other two on a new design (which resides in www2). The new categories are on www2 and their tabs from www redirect.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Tihomir,

Is there a way you can rename the subdomains? E.g., name the old design / category something like http://categoryname.domain.dk/ and have the new content on http://www.domain.dk/?

[TihomirPetrov]

Hi Jane,

I don't think that's possible. The client is a bit conservative in terms of changing the domain URLs. I think we just need to hurry up convincing them to finish the last section redesign. I was just wondering what the consequences now would be because of this www2. - referring consequences for the categories on it.

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

I doubt you will see too many SEO detriments to this, but that depends on how the site is configured re: the non-www version of the site. If you access http://domain.dk/, what happens? Are you redirected to www.domain.dk, www2.domain.dk, or does one of the two categories' content load on the non-www URL?

Google should simply treat www and www2 as different subdomains. I have not heard of ranking / indexing confusion based on using www1, www2 etc. but it's definitely the usability issue that would really bother me. Definitely good to work on convincing the client to hurry up with the complete redesign so you can get it all back on the www

[TihomirPetrov]

Hey,

the non-www version redirect to the old version - I know, pretty poor. But this is a situation I inherited So, I will try to do something because now all the link juice is going to the old version and dilutes because of the redirects.

Thanks for the help guys.

Especially you, Jane

[JaneCopland]

Good luck!