Root domain not resolving to www. Duplicate content?

[HardyIntl]

Hi,

I'm working with a domain that stays on the root domain if the www is not included.

But if the www is included, it stays with the www.

LIke this:

example.com
or
www.example.com

Of course, they are identical and both go to the same IP.

Do search engines consider that to be duplicate content?

thanks,
michael

[cfguti]

Yes, be careful with this.

Modify the .htaccess and redirect the example.com page to the www.example.com page.

More information: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Bye!

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Michael,

Let us know if you have questions about how to implement this. You will want to chose one version of your site, either www or non-www, and stick with that. Using Open Site Explorer to see whether www or non-www has the most backlinks can help with this decision.

Usually you do use an htaccess file to set this up, but sometimes you're on IIS or you don't have access to that file and need to work around it. If this is your case, let us know and we'll give you some help.

[Gyorgy]

The most important and easiest step is to use Google Webmaster Tools. Go to Site Configuration, then Settings and set the Preferred Domain to either www or non-www.

Google:
"The preferred domain is the one that you would like used to index your site's pages. If you specify your preferred domain as http://www.example.com and we find a link to your site that is formatted as http://example.com, we'll treat that link as if it was http://www.example.com."

If you have access to .htaccess and not afraid to use it, then the following will help:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ http://www.yourdomain.com.au/$1 [R=301,L]

This redirects the non-www domain to the www version, and also redirects the index.html to the www version. Edit accordingly..

[KeriMorgret]

Using GWT is easy and a great help, but it doesn't affect the site itself when people come to the site from something other than Google, nor does it help the other search engines.

[Francisco_Meza]

Sometimes the webhosting company has a feature for this. I have this as an option in dreamhost.com when I am setting up hosting for a specific domain.

Leave it alone: Both http://www.compatibletonercartridge.net/ and http://compatibletonercartridge.net/ will work.
<label class="innerlabel">Add WWW: Make http://compatibletonercartridge.net/ redirect to http://www.compatibletonercartridge.net/</label>
<label class="innerlabel">Remove WWW: Make http://www.compatibletonercartridge.net/ redirect to http://compatibletonercartridge.net/</label>

[HardyIntl]

Hey thanks everyone. Good info all around.

My client is hosting the site with a datarooms host, so I don't have access to the server settings. Tech support there seems clueless and "doesn't see a problem." I tried the DNS settings to no avail.

Is the only way to resolve this to get the dataroom host to modify htaccess?

thanks,
michael

[HardyIntl]

Hey thanks Gyorgy. I'm going to try your fix.

I'm wondering about the .com.au/$1 segment.

Should that .au remain there, is that australia?

Much obliged,
michael

[Gyorgy]

Sorry, I forgot to remove the .au