Can we put you on exhibit, please? See, we're always telling people to canonicalize their hostnames and declare a preferred form and redirect consistently ... and here's what happens when you don't :)

Do the two forms-- the example.com primary and the www.example.com subdomain * -- live on the same server? Apache or That Other Server? Do they have different dns records? What-if-any redirects are currently in place? Do the two sites have different content?


* Under normal circumstances, calling "www" a subdomain counts as ridiculous hair-splitting. But it seems to be appropriate here.

Ive always been told by my GF "Im one amongst a million", and "pretty special", now you say I should be put on an exhibit. Since Im a positive bunny Im going to pretend all women think Im awesome

Ive got to honest with you lucy, you seem to know a whole lot more about me on this issue, Im afraid I didnt understand half of your answer (and from there you can deduce why I made all those newbie mistakes). what you mean by canonicalize the hostnames? do I have to go to the vatican for that? :P

this was all made by another person, and he isnt the most savvy about these issues either but yes I think both domains live on the same server. they're the same website, just with two different domains, and because of the link profile with two different authority numbers. I dont think they have different DNS records, and there arent any redirects, they both have the same content.

It makes no difference if you type the www part or not, both URLs remain as typed and both have the same content, its like two exact duplicate sites, except they seem to be splitting my link juice (that didnt come out quite right.... that neither)

Hi Greg, unfortunately for people trying to help out, we would need to know what kind of server your domain is hosted at. If you do not know, you may want to contact the host to see what they suggest. Often a host can send you a link to information specific to their server so you can get their preferred solution. What works for one does not work for all and the hosting environment is #1 starting point for a fix. You may have some kind of management interface like ControlPanel (CP) where you can see some information.

Basically, the server delivers your pages at either address (URL). There are ways to have the server take all the traffic for both addresses and send it on to one single URL and that takes care of the problem. How it is done depends on the server OS.

This is a totally incomplete outline of the situation as it looks to me from your post. Lacking more details, it is hard to help out. If you have a CP and can tell us the server type it would help.

Edit: Overlapping preceding post because I type slow.

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Is it Apache or IIS?

There shouldn't be any "I think" about it. ftp yourself on in there and look at the physical files. Is there one set or two?

In Apache, the very-very first thing you'd do is make sure this rule is present:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(example\.com)?$
RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The wording is different in IIS, but conceptually it's the same thing: If a user arrives at your site using anything other than the exact name "example.com" or exactly nothing (this is for some HTTP/1.0 requests, generally proxies) then forcibly redirect them to the form you want. All you have to do is pick a preferred form and stick with it.

Make sure your internal links use the preferred form if they say anything at all. Most of the time your internal links will start with / for root. So once a person has arrived at the correct page, any subsequent requests will automatically be correct.

Sure, you can also go into Webmaster Tools and tell them your preferred form. It sounds as if they haven't picked one on their own; for some sites it seems as if they do.

For mechanical details about how to redirect, ask in the appropriate subforum, Apache or IIS. If it's Apache you may see me again. If it's IIS you definitely won't. Something tells me that your htaccess, if any-- assuming Apache-- is an unholy mess ;)

Go to Google Webmaster Tools of your site and then under the left hand menu click on "Crawl" and then click on "Fetch as Googlebot". When the page opens, just click on [Fetch] to fetch your home page.

Wait 10-20 seconds until the page is fetched (the column "Fetch status" will say "Success") and then click on blue "Success" link. You will see fetch headers, starting with a line something like "HTTP/1.1 200 OK".

Check next 10 or so lines and one of them should say something like "Server: ....", e.g. "Server: Microsoft-IIS/x.x" or "Server: Apache" or something third.

This should tell you which server the site is using.

thanks guys and gal

I'll try to give more information in my next post, I understand I didnt give you much to work with to begin with

cheers

Are you uploading files to two different sites with the "same name"? (I doubt that). What you are dealing with is example.com and www.example.com.

See [webmasterworld.com...] for many examples. These will also direct you in the right direction for Win servers...