Different variations of my site (www ; non www ; https ; http) have different authority status

[shaunn14]

In Open Site Explorer I can see that the www and non www versions of my site gets treated differently with one group of links pointing to each version of the same page. This gives a different PA score. eg. http://mydomain.com DA 38 PA 37 http://www.mydomain.com DA 28 PA 27. Currently our preferred variation is https://www.mydomain.com but it used o be http://mydomain.com for 3+ years and I can see that the non www version of my domain have more authority. Would you advise us to "change back" to setting our preferred url as the non www version as before or would it have a negative impact on our SERP ranking etc if we change it again now?

[GastonRiera]

Hi there!

Its completely correct that all those different variations have different metrics.

The advice here should be:

• Choose the preferred version and sitck with it.
• Once chosen that version, redirect 301 all other variations to the other. If redirection is not possible, then use canonical tags

Google does understand that you might have different versions and that you should select one and say to Google that.
Authority and linkpowerness will be taken into account by google.
There is also a great post from Cyrus Sheperd, stating that redirects do pass authority correctly:
301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEO - Moz Blog

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR