8 replies to this topic

[tomsk]

A friend of mine has chosen to have a website built by someone and it is shows as his-site-name.com in the search engines and not www.his-site-name.com why would this be?

Thanks for any help

[Randy]

Is the site available if you point your browser to each of the addresses? Or it is automatically redirecting you to the non-www address? Or can you get to the first page with either address but then when you click on a link do you get sent to a non-www address?

If it has a 301 redirect in there to the non-www address that's the reason why this address is in the search engines. If it doesn't redirect there are probably just more (or more important) links pointing to the non-www address. If you can get to the first page as a www address, but then the first click takes you to a non-www address the webmaster is probably using absolute urls in their site navigation and has chosen to use the non-www address.

It doesn't much matter which version you choose, so long as you're consistent and use the same version all the time.

[Michael Martinez]

Most likely the designer opted to omit the "www." portion of the domain reference in internal links. Many people now do that.

[tomsk]

Thanks for responses

The site has is new and as far as I am aware has no link's to it , and if I type www. domain.com or domain.com the site shows the same in a browser, in fact if search in google www.domain name it comes back with domain.com not www.domain . com

[Randy]

Does the site have a Webmaster Tools account set up yet?

It almost sounds like someone has told Google to make the non-www the default address. Though there's also a possibility of a link being out there somewhere that you're simply not aware of yet.

[tomsk]

Does the site have a Webmaster Tools account set up yet?

It almost sounds like someone has told Google to make the non-www the default address. Though there's also a possibility of a link being out there somewhere that you're simply not aware of yet.

The person who has built it has added google analytics's

Just seen this at the bottom of the page

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

[Randy]

Yeah, that's just GoAn Javascript code. It should have nothing to do with which version they have showing up in their index.

[Alan Perkins]

As Randy says, it's possible that some work has been done within Webmaster tools to set this up. However, this sounds unlikely in this instance.

The site has is new and as far as I am aware has no link's to it

Google has found at least one link to the site somewhere, which is why the site is indexed. Since the site is indexed under the non-www version of the domain name, either

• Google has only found links to the non-www version of the site OR
• Google has found links to both the www and non-www version of the site, but the links to the non-www version are stronger (higher number and/or better quality) than the links to the www version

Either way, it's nothing to really worry about, but the best solution is:

1. Pick the version you would like to use - www or non-www
2. Set up a HTTP 301 redirect from the version you don't want to use to the version you do want to use
3. Consistently use your chosen version both on links within your site and links you negotiate to your site

[tomsk]

Thanks Alan, Randy and Michael for your help and advice