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If that's the case Dr. Pete, that saves me from having to add the tag to 51 pages. I already have one on the homepage. Thank you.

Make sure you have a space after the second quotation:

Thank you for expounding on this issue I thought it fit.

Dr. Peter, thank you for clarifying this. I do see the R=301 now but I didn't see it before.

That's what I figured. Is their a preferred 301 code to use?

Yes, I will be sure to use it internally as well. I can see where that would be a mess. Thank you again for sharing your expertise.

Thank you again SEOKeith, I understand what has to be done. I just wanted to make sure I was clear on what needed to be done. Yes, the rel canonical tag will reflect whatever the page is I'm adding it. Since I didn't get the errors for it I never added it to my other sites; so now I have to it for all of them. Fun...

SEOKeith, the problem is sitewide, all 52 pages. I was hoping to solve the problem in the server and avoid coding each page. But from what I'm gathering is, even if I use the 301 redirect I should still add the rel="canonical" on each page to avoid scraping. This tells the SE that this page is the only page to index and crawl.

Lol, sorry I didn't recognize the acronym. Yes, I have a site that is through Wordpress and one that is through Joomla. The one that I'm having issues with is not through a CMS though.

Thank you SEOKeith, what would be the difference between using a 301 in the .htaccess verses the code Ryan suggested <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">?</ifmodule>

Also if I use the 301 redirect in the .htaccess would it cover this issue site wide?

Okay so the space needs to be there.

No, I don't use a CMS?

Thank you SEOKeith! I definitely want to make sure I don't use any bad practices to fix this issue and thank you for clarifying that about the code.

So if I apply the code and fix the issue from the server by making the URL www.example.com

I would then add the rel=canonical tag to prevent scraping.

Would this be the correct URL to put in the tag?

Thank you Keri, that's what I'm thinking but I want to make sure. Thank you for messaging Dr. Pete, I hope maybe he can expound on this.

Thanks a lot guys this is some great information. Let me get this straight.

Is solving this issue with the code below a bad practice?

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on</ifmodule>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

If it's not a bad practice and I implement the code to stop the issue, you are saying I should still use a rel=canonical tag to prevent scraping?

Thank you Ryan, that is exactly what I expected the problem to be but really couldn't figure out how to address it or solve it. You explained it very well and I appreciate the suggested code to use as well. I should be able to figure it out from here.

Thank you again!

Thank you Brent and kjay. Take a look at Ryan's answer, I think that is what I was shooting for. If I can eliminate the problem of an ambiguous URL at the server level then I will not need rel="canonical or 301/302. What do you guys think?

I know that using either 301 or 302 will fix the problem of duplicate page content. My question would be; is there an easier way of preventing duplicate page content when it's an issue with the URL. For example:

URL: http://example.com

URL: http://www.example.com

My guess would be like it says here, that it's a setting issue with the server.

If anyone has some pointers on how to prevent this from occurring, it would be greatly appreciated.

I'm interested n seeing your infographic. Can you post a link to it or send it to me?