www or not www?

[raysor]

Can someone explain this www thing; I always see it mentioned but never fully understand it.

It has come to my attention recently regarding one of my sites:
www.jastac.co.uk

When I do a site:www.jastac.co.uk on google it shows 1 page as being indexed, when I do site:jastac.co.uk it shows all seven pages.

Also in xml-sitemaps.com if I do a sitemap index via http://www.jastac.co.uk it will only find the one page, but if I do the same index for http://jastac.co.uk it indexes the whole site.

Is this a problem and if so should I do something to rectify it?

[DSL Guy]

I know depending on which one you want to use, all links should be configured that way.

i experience a similar problem because i set up my google webmaster acct using the cname of a site i direct all links to www.

seems that if you have links to your domain, the pr juice goes to the one version or other because se's view them as independent domains.

[Lanarks]

WWW means World Wide Web.

This is protcol of the W3 Consortium, the body that determines the correct syntax of HTML

W3 = WWW

[JWJ]

Raysor, as you've noticed, the se's will be splitting your site and it's PR between the two versions (www and not-www). It's highly desirable to pick one version and stick to it. I think it's generally recommended to use the www version, but the most important thing is to use one or the other. One problem is that you may already have BOTH versions being linked to from other sites, and the SE's certainly have both. You can put some code into your htaccess file that makes sure any links to the non-www version automatically redirect to the www version, and this would be well worthwhile doing, in my opinion.

[DSL Guy]

Originally Posted by JWJ

Raysor, as you've noticed, the se's will be splitting your site and it's PR between the two versions (www and not-www). It's highly desirable to pick one version and stick to it. I think it's generally recommended to use the www version, but the most important thing is to use one or the other. One problem is that you may already have BOTH versions being linked to from other sites, and the SE's certainly have both. You can put some code into your htaccess file that makes sure any links to the non-www version automatically redirect to the www version, and this would be well worthwhile doing, in my opinion.

Yes I second JWJ's motion. Since putting the redirect code into my htaccess the site is doing much better all the time.

I can supply the code if you need it.

[webado]

The .htaccess fle can only be used on Apache servers and only if the the mod_rewrite module installed. Otherwise you have to use server-side scripting.

This is how it's done in .htaccess:
http://groups.google.com/group/only-...-apache-server

This is how it's done on an IIS server:
http://www.jlh-design.com/2006/08/30...on-iis-server/

[raysor]

thanks all, my server is using apache so i can use the ht access method. Im not sure how jastac has come to be www-less though, all my site links are short form i think (just index.php, sale.php etc). I will use the code though.

I sort of understand now; I suppose "www" is effectivly a sub-domain, just like mail.*, mx.* etc right?