Does Prefix of my URL make any difference?

[intmktcom]

Hello,

I have a website which is initially appeared in search engine as without www. Last week I made changes in preferred domain name that it appeared with www.

In search engine it still shows as without www. I notified to google through webmaster tools that now my domain name is with www but it still shows without www.

I want to know that does it affect in SEO and rankings.

In Google webmaster tools I added my url with and without www however I kept preferred domain as with www.

Do I need to make any extra changes in order to avoid confusion for search engines.

Please guide.

Thanks

[intmktcom]

Hi,

In google webmaster tools my sitemap was not added before now I added sitemap to www.mydomain.com.

I have also add mydomain.com (without wwww) to google webmaster tools so do I require to add sitemap to mydomain.com also?

When I added www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com to google webmaster tools so does google see it as one site or two however I kept preferred domain as www.mydomain.com

Thanks

[djlaidler]

Hi,

Yes,  I still would. What I have suggested will only take 2 minutes and is considered best practice.

For non-www to www use;

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Dan

[intmktcom]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

To avoid confusion I already set preferred domain as www.

Even I performed site verification process by Google webmaster tools.

After doing all above do I require to perform as you suggested.

Thanks

Bhadresh

[djlaidler]

Hi Bhadresh,

Potentially yes... Subdomain are considered as separate sites and although most sites will render in both www and non-www versions by default, loosely the www version is still a subdomain.

On top of this dilemma is that when you are link building (or better still link earning) people will link to a variety of www and non-www URL's, this will affect how your site performs. By redirecting one to another for any given page you will ensure only one page exists.

Here is the example given by SitePoint for redirecting www to non-www, feel free to review the original post for other .htaccess rules...

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Hope this helps!