Confused about the need for "www."

[gunsock]

Hi All

I hope this is an acceptable subject but I've just noticed an amazing thing.

When I do a Google search for

site:www.mysite.com I get a list of 40 pages indexed,

but when I search

site:mysite.com i get a list over 200 pages indexed - 5 times the number.

 

To my knowledge I have never, ever, linked internally to pages without using the "www." prefix. I have never even thought about leaving out the "www."

 

How come Google indexes my pages without the prefix and is reluctant to index them with the prefix?

Any ideas will be very gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.

[virtual]

Maybe this article will help you understand

http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html

 

Personally I never use the www it is kind of obsolete.

[falkencreative]

Yeah, Google sometimes does double index content if you have both www and non-www versions available. That's why a lot of sites use a htaccess redirect (http://www.neohide.com/htaccess-mod-rewrite-for-www-domain-name-prefix) which redirects visitors to either the www version or the non-www version depending on which you specify. I use something similar to that on my own site.

 

I should note -- htaccess files only work for Linux based servers, not Windows based servers.

[gunsock]

Thank you virtual and falkencreative. That information is extremely interesting and has solved my problem. I've now added the appropriate code to my htaccess file.

Thanks again!

[mywebmastertips]

Make sure to specify in Google's webmaster tools whether you want your site to be www. or no www.

 

Plus make sure a canonical tag is in all your pages to tell the search engines your preferred method.

 

The last thing to prevent this is to do a 301 permanent redirect with your .htaccess file. This way if someone goes to your site with no www. it would automatically add it for you.