Difference Between www.domain.com and www.domain.com/ ?
-
Hi,
Of course, it is obvious that when other sites link to you, they choose how to do so in terms of the anchor text. My questions is:
1. Most of the domain names I see on the web are: www.domain.com/ however, I am pretty sure that when someone thinks you have a site that there members can benefit by they will link to: www.domain,com , am I coorect in stating that the search engines (SE) see these as two separate and distinct domains?
2. If so, are these too, then these must be different and distinct as well: www.domain.com/best-service vs. www.domain.com/best-service/
**I went on that assumption and have created 301 directs for the latter example. **
3. How would one check to see if a 301 direct is in place?
As always, I am appreciated to this site and member's skills.
Jim
-
My IT Director and I just had an interesting back and forth discussion about this. I'll spare you the witty repartee and take you straight to a post in the Google Webmaster's Central Blog:
To Slash or Not to Slash?
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
Quote:
"If both slash and non-trailing-slash versions contain the same content and each returns 200, you can:
- Consider changing this behavior (more info below) to reduce duplicate content and improve crawl efficiency.
- Leave it as-is. Many sites have duplicate content. Our indexing process often handles this case for webmasters and users. While it’s not totally optimal behavior, it’s perfectly legitimate and a-okay.
- Rest assured that for your root URL specifically, http://example.com is equivalent to http://example.com/ and can’t be redirected even if you’re Chuck Norris."
We particularly enjoyed Maile Ohye's reference to Chuck Norris. It's handy as a search term if you ever want to find her post again Hope this helps!
-
1. Same domain, but they are different pages.
2. Yes, those would be considered different pages.
3. I use the Chrome Extension: Redirect Path. It creates a little widget in the header of my browser to show me when a redirect happened, and what kind of redirect it is.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlink From Different Language Sites Will Spoil My Ranking?
Hi there! Excited to joining this community. The main question is that if I get backlinks from different language sites then that backlink will be worthy or non-worthy in the eye of search engine? I know if I target international market by presenting my content in different languages then of course it will be worthwhile for me. But what will be happened if I do not represent content in different languages on my site but get the backlines from other language sites such as: Chinese, Russian or any other? Also I have seen many sites which are getting backlinks from different language sites and they are just getting high authority. Is there any expert?
SEO Learn Center | | mianarfan3331 -
I changed the {Site Name} of our domain by capitalizing a letter. 48 hours later our SEO rankings are bad. How long does it take to rebound our prior rankings. The {site name} was at the end of every page title.
I changed the {Site Name} of our domain slightly and capitalized a letter. The impact 48 hours later on SEO is really, really bad. How long does it take to recapture our prior rankings and should I change the site name back to the original? The {site name} was at the end of every page title. Thanks for any help/advice on this. We worked so hard to get our business on the first page for many keywords and "POOF" we are gone now.
SEO Learn Center | | LinckB0 -
Can some expert help us on switching domain name issues?
We have a small brick and mortar store chain in California. And we also have an online store with the same domain name. We are planning to invest on our online store platform and switch to Magento. while switching to Magento platform we are also considering to switch our domain name also. Our current domain name is not representing our current business model and capacity. Our brick and mortar store name is PuzzleZoo, our e-store domain is also PuzzleZoo. This domain is active in use for well over 10 years. But once started as a puzzle store, today we sell more toys than puzzles. We want to keep our brick and mortar store name as our brand. We also own ToyZoo domain name. And we are looking to use the new Magento store with ToyZoo domain. The question is should we keep both domains separately running or should we use only one. In this case should we stay with PuzzleZoo with only looks like a Puzzle store instead of a toy store. Or should we use ToyZoo and redirect the PuzzleZoo links to ToyZoo links? If we have both stores open with similar products, descriptions and images, are we going to get penalized by Google for duplicate content issues? Or PuzzleZoo being a brick and mortar store and ToyZoo being an online only store will help us to avoid getting Penalized by Google or other search engines? If we use Toyzoo are we going to lose our keyword authority and traffic? Looking forward to hear Expert opinions. Your participation will be highly appreciated.
SEO Learn Center | | PuzzleZoo0 -
Keep www in the domain or not?
I have a client who had a wordpress website built about 1.5 years ago without the www in front of the domain. In May of this year client decided to have his website rebuilt. The new web designer built the site in Joomla and changed hosting company (first website hosted by Go Daddy) the new web designer built the new site with the www in front of the domain. He put redirects from the old to the new. Client wants to go back to wordpress design. My question is: do we keep the www as the new site has this or revert back to the domain without the www. (domains are the same between the new and old site, only difference is old site has no www and new site does) web designer put in redirects to go from non www site to new site with www however I don't think he did it right. New site is still getting errors and when I look in the hosting account there are 9 pages of redirects. The old and new site are not that big. The hosting company tech support was a little shocked that there were 9 pages of redirects. My question is: will client loose what momentum we've built with redirecting traffic to the www new site? We've been working hard since the new site launched to get it indexed. Thoughts? Feedback please. We are going to move back to wordpress platform but I'm not sure about this www whether we keep it or not. I just don't want to mess up any indexing that we've achieved with the new site if we revert back to the domain without the www in front of it. Thank you
SEO Learn Center | | SOM240 -
I've a monthly budget of $500 for inbound marketing, please suggest me services/resources on which i can spend this money
We are a SME that is into Mobile apps development services. I would like to know how best i can use a monthly budget of $500 specifically in inbound marketing efforts. Please provide me a list of services/resources ( Free and Paid ) which can help me. Any other suggestion will be a great help Thanks in advance
SEO Learn Center | | Harshaseo0 -
Time Tracking, Best Way / Tool?
Looking for the best, easiest, way or tool for time tracking for client work. What has worked for you?
SEO Learn Center | | bozzie3110 -
Subdomain Structure vs Top Level Domain Site; An Actual Case
A major non-profit with 360 locations just completed a new program. The non-profit has updated its site at URL www.mysite.com. Each of the 360 locations has a subdomain site with URL http://mylocation.mysite.com which reflects the branding of www.mysite.com and has a Drupal content management system. The company is asking each location to transition the top level domain of each location ( example www.mysite.com to http://mylocation.mysite.com). The subdomain location sites are tied to a CRM system, which initially hasn't worked. But the long term objective is to gather CRM data via the subdomain location sites. The main site has an Alexa Global Rank of 30,400 and a US Rank of 7900. The main site has 2600 backlinks, and is a pretty powerful site. Some individual locations in large metropolitan areas have decent backlinks, but most don't. The PR of most local sites is 3 to 6. The SEO experts at www.mysite.com have maintained that the power and authority of the main site www.mysite.com would propel the local rank of each location to a position of high visibility. Using Market Samuari and Majestic SEO, a test on each of the 360 location subdomains was performed. It was determined that Page Rank did pass from the main site to the local site in 15% of the cases. However, 85% of the subdomain sites had 0 Page Rank. Page Rank did vary from 2 to 5 on the 15% that passed rank, but there was no cross checking to see if the subdomain location had the same page rank as the locations top level domain. Referring Domains Domain (RDD) was usually -1; Referring Domains Page (RDP) was usually 0; Page Backlinks (BLP) was usually 0; Back Links to Domain (BLD) was usually 0; Google Cache age was all over the map from unknown to 58 days. Questions: Anyone suspect why some sites pass Page Rank and others don't; Should we continue on the path towards using the subdomain sites, or should each location keep its top level site and work on improving their local search visibility there? There is no way to check Google Analytics (GA) on the subdomain sites without having to access GA on the main site www.mysite.com. Right? Will Google Places and Bing Local honor the subdomain URLs for their respective Local Search pages. Would there be a compelling reason or reasons to abandon the subdomain sites? Thanks much for your comments!!
SEO Learn Center | | VernonWanner0 -
Flow of Authority/PR Distribution of Internal Links
OK, there are tons of Q&A on this subject but after about 20 mins of sifting through I found nothing on this. On the surface it is a simple idea but I'd like to hear a wide range of thought s on this. So if a page has 150 internal links and only about 3-5 external links, would it still be considered a good page to get a link from assuming it is relevant and authoritative? My thoughts have always been that too many links on a page, regardless of whether or not they are internal links or external links, will dilute that page's authority either way and that in turn makes it a poor link prospect. If PR/authority flows internally through links then my thoughts should be substantiated. And I think that we all agree that external links flow authority out from the domain AND the page. But internal links flow authority away from the page which should make a page with lots of internal links on it a poor target for a link.
SEO Learn Center | | GearyLSF370