Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Duplicate Content www vs. non-www and best practices

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Duplicate Content www vs. non-www and best practices

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    5
    6902
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • EnvoyWeb
      EnvoyWeb last edited by

      I have a customer who had prior help on his website and I noticed a 301 redirect in his .htaccess

      Rule for duplicate content removal : www.domain.com vs domain.com

      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com [NC]
      RewriteRule (.*) http://www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com/$1 [R=301,L,NC]

      The result of this rule is that i type MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com in the browser and it redirects to www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com

      I wonder if this is causing issues in SERPS.  If I have some inbound links pointing to www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some pointing to MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, I would think that this rewrite isn't necessary as it would seem that Googlebot is smart enough to know that these aren't two sites.

      -----Can you comment on whether this is a best practice for all domains?
      -----I've run a report for backlinks.  If my thought is true that there are some pointing to www.www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some to the www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, is there any value in addressing this?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ThompsonPaul
        ThompsonPaul last edited by

        _If I have some inbound links pointing to www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some pointing to MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, I would think that this rewrite isn't necessary as it would seem that Googlebot is smart enough to know that these aren't two sites. _

        Absolutely NOT, unfortunately. Search engines specifically consider these two versions of the URLS to be two totally different sites. The redirect rule you currently have is specifically in place to correct this problem so the two versions of your site (in the eyes of the engines) aren't competing with each other.

        The previous developer knew what he was doing. Leave the redirect as-is. Just be careful that all links you create use the primary version of the URL - you'll retain a bit more "link juice" that way than having them go through the redirect. (i.e. always write links as www.my-customer-site.com/whatever for links in content, menus, incoming links where possible)

        Paul

        P.S. For proof that search engines consider those URLs different sites, Google's own Webmaster Tools has a setting where you can tell Google which version of the site URL you want to be primary. Much better to do this with a proper 301-redirect though so that you can tell ALL search engines, not just Google.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
        • RohitPalit
          RohitPalit last edited by

          -----Can you comment on whether this is a best practice for all domains?

          Yes, it is.

          -----I've run a report for backlinks.  If my thought is true that there are some pointing to www.www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some to the www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, is there any value in addressing this?

          You shouldn't worry about that at all. 301's are just fine. They don't only redirect visitors, search engines like Google also follow them to pass authority signals to the redirected page.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Oren.
            Oren. last edited by

            You want to commit to one and put a 301 on the other.  Googlebot should be smart enough, but it isn't really.  Some things aren't best to be left to chance.

            Here's the Moz 301 redirect article: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

            Edit: Here's another article about www.mysite.com vs mysite.com http://www.stepforth.com/resources/web-marketing-knowledgebase/non-www-redirect/#.UlbGl1Cko2s

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • RebekahMay
              RebekahMay last edited by

              Ideally one version of the site should redirect to the other version using a 301 to transfer any link juice from one version of the domain to the other.  In an issue where both versions have links pointing to them, the best solution is to see which version has the highest domain authority and the most links and use that as your preferred domain.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • TheDude

                URL Rewriting Best Practices

                Hey Moz! I’m getting ready to implement URL rewrites on my website to improve site structure/URL readability. More specifically I want to: Improve our website structure by removing redundant directories. Replace underscores with dashes and remove file extensions for our URLs. Please see my example below: Old structure: http://www.widgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm New structure: https://www.widgets.com/commercial-widgets/small-blue-widget I've read several URL rewriting guides online, all of which seem to provide similar but overall different methods to do this. I'm looking for what's considered best practices to implement these rewrites. From what I understand, the most common method is to implement rewrites in our .htaccess file using mod_rewrite (which will find the old URLs and rewrite them according to the rewrites I implement). One question I can't seem to find a definitive answer to is when I implement the rewrite to remove file extensions/replace underscores with dashes in our URLs, do the webpage file names need to be edited to the new format? From what I understand the webpage file names must remain the same for the rewrites in the .htaccess to work. However, our internal links (including canonical links) must be changed to the new URL format. Can anyone shed light on this? Also, I'm aware that implementing URL rewriting improperly could negatively affect our SERP rankings. If I redirect our old website directory structure to our new structure using this rewrite, are my bases covered in regards to having the proper 301 redirects in place to not affect our rankings negatively? Please offer any advice/reliable guides to handle this properly. Thanks in advance!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude
                0
              • morg45454

                Robots.txt - Do I block Bots from crawling the non-www version if I use www.site.com ?

                my site uses is set up at http://www.site.com I have my site redirected from non- www to the www in htacess file. My question is... what should my robots.txt file look like for the non-www site? Do you block robots from crawling the site like this? Or do you leave it blank? User-agent: * Disallow: / Sitemap: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/sitemap.xml Sitemap: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/video-sitemap.xml

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | morg45454
                0
              • AMHC

                Removing duplicate content

                Due to URL changes and parameters on our ecommerce sites, we have a massive amount of duplicate pages indexed by google, sometimes up to 5 duplicate pages with different URLs. 1. We've instituted canonical tags site wide. 2. We are using the parameters function in Webmaster Tools. 3. We are using 301 redirects on all of the obsolete URLs 4. I have had many of the pages fetched so that Google can see and index the 301s and canonicals. 5. I created HTML sitemaps with the duplicate URLs, and had Google fetch and index the sitemap so that the dupes would get crawled and deindexed. None of these seems to be terribly effective. Google is indexing pages with parameters in spite of the parameter (clicksource) being called out in GWT. Pages with obsolete URLs are indexed in spite of them having 301 redirects. Google also appears to be ignoring many of our canonical tags as well, despite the pages being identical. Any ideas on how to clean up the mess?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC
                0
              • marcandre

                Woocommerce SEO & Duplicate content?

                Hi Moz fellows, I'm new to Woocommerce and couldn't find help on Google about certain SEO-related things. All my past projects were simple 5 pages websites + a blog, so I would just no-index categories, tags and archives to eliminate duplicate content errors. But with Woocommerce Product categories and tags, I've noticed that many e-Commerce websites with a high domain authority actually rank for certain keywords just by having their category/tags indexed. For example keyword 'hippie clothes' = etsy.com/category/hippie-clothes (fictional example) The problem is that if I have 100 products and 10 categories & tags on my site it creates THOUSANDS of duplicate content errors, but If I 'non index' categories and tags they will never rank well once my domain authority rises... Anyone has experience/comments about this? I use SEO by Yoast plugin. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance. -Marc

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcandre
                1
              • Eric_R

                Removing Content 301 vs 410 question

                Hello, I was hoping to get the SEOmoz community’s advice on how to remove content most effectively from a large website. I just read a very thought-provoking thread in which Dr. Pete and Kerry22 answered a question about how to cut content in order to recover from Panda.  (http://www.seomoz.org/q/panda-recovery-what-is-the-best-way-to-shrink-your-index-and-make-google-aware). Kerry22 mentioned a process in which 410s would be totally visible to googlebot so that it would easily recognize the removal of content.  The conversation implied that it is not just important to remove the content, but also to give google the ability to recrawl that content to indeed confirm the content was removed (as opposed to just recrawling the site and not finding the content anywhere). This really made lots of sense to me and also struck a personal chord… Our website was hit by a later Panda refresh back in March 2012, and ever since then we have been aggressive about cutting content and doing what we can to improve user experience. When we cut pages, though, we used a different approach, doing all of the below steps:
                1. We cut the pages
                2. We set up permanent 301 redirects for all of them immediately.
                3. And at the same time, we would always remove from our site all links pointing to these pages (to make sure users didn’t stumble upon the removed pages. When we cut the content pages, we would either delete them or unpublish them, causing them to 404 or 401, but this is probably a moot point since we gave them 301 redirects every time anyway.  We thought we could signal to Google that we removed the content while avoiding generating lots of errors that way… I see that this is basically the exact opposite of Dr. Pete's advice and opposite what Kerry22 used in order to get a recovery, and meanwhile here we are still trying to help our site recover.  We've been feeling that our site should no longer be under the shadow of Panda. So here is what I'm wondering, and I'd be very appreciative of advice or answers for the following questions: 1. Is it possible that Google still thinks we have this content on our site, and we continue to suffer from Panda because of this?  
                Could there be a residual taint caused by the way we removed it, or is it all water under the bridge at this point because Google would have figured out we removed it (albeit not in a preferred way)? 2.  If there’s a possibility our former cutting process has caused lasting issues and affected how Google sees us, what can we do now (if anything) to correct the damage we did? Thank you in advance for your help,
                Eric

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_R
                1
              • HiteshBharucha

                Duplicate content on subdomains.

                Hi Mozer's, I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com. So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication. Many Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha
                0
              • Michael-Goode

                Domain Name Change - Best Practices?

                Good day guys, We got a restaurant that is changing its name and domain. However they are keeping the same server location, same content and same pages (we are just changing the logo on the website). It just has to go a new domain. We don't want to lose the value of the current site, and we want to avoid any duplicate penalties. Could you please advise of the best practices of doing a domain name change? Thank you.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael-Goode
                0
              • RobertFisher

                Www and non www how to check it.......for sure. No, really, for absolutely sure!!

                Ok, I know it has been asked, answered, and re-asked but I am going to ask for a specific reason. As you know, anyone who is a graphic designer or web developer is also an expert in SEO....Right??? 
                I am dealing with a client who is clinging to a developer but wants us to do the SEO on a myriad of sites. All connect to his main site via links, etc. The main site was just redeveloped by a developer who claims extensive SEO knowledge. The client who referred me to them is getting over twenty times the organic clients they are and is in a JV with the new client. Soooo, I want to show them once and for all they are wrong on the www. versus non-www. When I do a Site:NewClient.com in Google I get a total of 13 www.newclient.com url's and 20 newclient.com url's without the www. Oddly, none are dupes of the other. So, where the www.NewClient/toy-boat/ is there, the other might be non www.  NewClient/toy-boat/sailing-green/ Even the contact page is in the www.NewClient/contact versus the non www of NewClient/Contact-us/ But, both pages seem to resolve to the non www. (A note here is that I originally instructed the designer to do non www to www. because the page authority was on the www.NewClient and he did opposite. With pages that are actually PDF files, if you try to use the www.NewClient/CoolGuy.pdf it comes up 404. When I check our sites, using Site:We-Build-Better.com ours return all www.We-Build-better/ url's. So, any other advice on how to insure these correct or incorrect? Oddly, we have discovered that sometimes in OSE, even with a correct canonical redirect it shows one without authority and the other with....we have contacted support. Come on mozzers, hook a brother up!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.