www subdomain

[j]

WWW subdomains

Google recommends, and I see that many major sites are complying, with
not having duplicate content on a subdomain. At least that is my take on it.

So, if you have www.some-domain.com and some-domain.com, traffic on
some-domain.com gets a 301 to www.some-domain.com

Can anyone shed some light on why this is being done?

Jeff

[richard]

I think maybe what they're saying is, the subdomain content should not be a
complete duplicate of the main.
Where a domain could possibly have content such as a pargraph or two of
headline news, while the sub domain carries the full article, that should
not be an issue.
Then why would anyone totally duplicate the content on a subdomain?
That's inefficent and totally stupid, as well as wasting space.

[Mark Goodge]

On Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:21:45 -0400, j put finger to keyboard and typed:

I think you're slightly misunderstanding it. While it's common practice to
have a site respond to both http://example.com and http://www.example.com,
for the sake of people who either prefer to use the 'www' prefix or not and
tend to type in URLs manually, Google's recommendation is that you choose
one or the other to be the canonical version and make sure it's clear which
is which. You can do that via the "rel='canonical'" meta tag, and via both
Google and Bing's webmaster tools.

That way, although both versions of the site will be fully functional to
users, only one of them will appear in search results and you won't get a
duplicate content penalty by any of the search engines.

On a more general note, the search engines recommend that in any situation
where you legitimately have the same content on two different pages (for
example, a news article could be filed both by date and by topic) that you
pick just one of its possible URLs and tag that as canonical. That way, you
avoid any duplicate content penalty.

Mark
--
Please take a short survey on salary perceptions: http://meyu.eu/am
My blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk

[Mike Duffy]

Mark Goodge <use...@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote in
news:bqntq8dhqmbov4h1f...@news.markshouse.net:


> ... That way, you avoid any duplicate content penalty.

Usually, the content itself is not actually duplicated. The effect is
achieved by simply having duplicate DNS entries for the two domains
pointing to the same IP address.

Thus we avoid using up twice the storage. Even better, we avoid having two
possibly different versions of the web-site.

The problem is that scripts get complicated when you need to check which
version (with or without the "www.") is being used. Often it is easier to
do a complete re-direct to the sub-domain somewhere in the page load
inititialization code.

--
http://pages.videotron.ca/duffym/index.htm

[richard]

btw, this really isn't a subdomain.
used to be absolutely mandatory that the "www" be used.
Now it is optional.
So yeah, the same information will be shown if your site uses the "WWW".

if you get a 301, that's generally because the host server is set up that
way. Not a problem with google's demands.

[John Bokma]

j <mun...@att.net> writes:

> WWW subdomains
>
> Google recommends, and I see that many major sites are complying, with
> not having duplicate content on a subdomain. At least that is my take
> on it.
>

> So, if you have .... and ...., traffic on
> some-domain.com gets a 301 to ....

Use example.com for examples.

http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2004/04/12/rewritingurlsforgoogle.html

> Can anyone shed some light on why this is being done?

You answered your own question in the same post.

I recommend to redirect www.example.com to example.com instead of the
other way around. It's shorter, and easier to pronounce.

--
John Bokma j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/ Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books: http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html

[John Bokma]

richard <nor...@example.com> writes:

> On Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:21:45 -0400, j wrote:
>
>> WWW subdomains
>>
>> Google recommends, and I see that many major sites are complying, with
>> not having duplicate content on a subdomain. At least that is my take on it.
>>
>> So, if you have www.some-domain.com and some-domain.com, traffic on
>> some-domain.com gets a 301 to www.some-domain.com
>>
>> Can anyone shed some light on why this is being done?
>>
>> Jeff
>
> btw, this really isn't a subdomain.

It is.

> used to be absolutely mandatory that the "www" be used.

In the days when it was common to have dedicated hardware to single
servers, it was common (but not mandatory), i.e. ftp.example.com,
www.example.com, etc. It was easier to break it down this way compared
to get a complete domain for each server.

> Now it is optional.
> So yeah, the same information will be shown if your site uses the "WWW".
>
> if you get a 301, that's generally because the host server is set up that
> way. Not a problem with google's demands.

I recommend to redirect the www.example.com to example.com. The latter
is shorter and there's no real need anymore for a www subdomain for most
sites.

[Norman Peelman]

.com is a top level domain
example.com is a subdomain of .com
www.example.com is a subdomain of example.com
usa.www.example.com is a subdomain of www.example.com
florida.usa.www.example.com is a subdomain of usa.www.example.com

...up to 127 subdomains. Subdomains should typically represent the
cross-section of usage/users you are expecting to enter at that point.
'www' is not optional, it is needed where it is needed.

--
Norman
Registered Linux user #461062
AMD64X2 6400+ Ubuntu 10.04 64bit

[richard]

Not quite.
"example.com" is the top level domain.
www.example.com is the full url of the domain.
a subdomain is properly shown as www.sub.example.com
http://sub.example.com should get to you the same page.
The use of the WWW is strictly determined by the hosts of the domain, not
the ruling board of ICANN.
Any subdomain using the TLD is owned by that person. YOU cannot register
www.sub.example.com as your domain.
According to my hosts, I can have what ever number of subdomains I want.

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

richard the sto0pid wrote:

> Not quite.

Quite.

> "example.com" is the top level domain.

Wrong. I do not see that at the top level domain listing:
<http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db>

> www.example.com is the full url of the domain.

Wrong again. The full URL would be http://example.com

> a subdomain is properly shown as www.sub.example.com

No, sub.example.com is a sub-domain.
[snip rest of tiresome crap]

Bullis, you really should just take your computer and pitch it in the bin
by the curb. You can't get *anything* right.

--
-bts
-This space for rent, but the price is high

[richard]

Technically, http://www.sub.example.com is the full url.
The use of the "www" is an option set by the server, not iana.org or even
icann.
I know this because my host, hostgator.com has it set that way.
I can link to my sites with or without the "www".

Actually, the change came about from those who wrote and developed
browsers.
It was an inclusion as part of the "auto complete" function.
In IE 4 you needed the "www" but not in IE5.
Or was it IE6?

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

richard the sto0pid wrote:

> Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
>> Bullis, you really should just take your computer and pitch it in the
>> bin by the curb. You can't get *anything* right.
>

> Technically, http://www.sub.example.com is the full url. ...

Please follow the advice about what to do with your computer.

[Norman Peelman]

'.com' is the (a) top level domain.

> www.example.com is the full url of the domain.

Only if the 'www' subdomain has been registered or the
nameserver/host is doing an automagic redirect...

> a subdomain is properly shown as www.sub.example.com

Well, that certainly -could- be a subdomain. But only if it was
registered that way (as explained above). A subdomain is properly shown
as the way it was registered.

> http://sub.example.com should get to you the same page.

Not necessarily, my company (like many) uses 'example.com' as the
local Intranet access point. 'www.example.com' is used for those
(meaning our customers) accessing the site from the outside world, aka
the World Wide Web. They serve what should be obviously very different
different data.

> The use of the WWW is strictly determined by the hosts of the domain, not
> the ruling board of ICANN.

It is strictly determined by what you register/server setup at your
host/domain. If your host automagicaly directs all example.com traffic
to www.example.com for you (or basically they give you the 'www'
subdomain behind the scenes), you see no difference. Nor do you need to
care if that servers your needs. Just understand that you can (should be
able to) override 'www' if you need to, as explained above.

> Any subdomain using the TLD is owned by that person. YOU cannot register
> www.sub.example.com as your domain.

That has nothing to do with the original post. But slightly wrong as
again, '.com. is a TLD. You lease usage of a subdomain of that (.com) at
which point subdomains of that (lease) are not/should not be purchasable
by anyone else.

> According to my hosts, I can have what ever number of subdomains I want.
>
>

That's their business...

[Denis McMahon]

On Wed, 05 Jun 2013 20:43:41 -0400, richard wrote:

> Not quite.
> "example.com" is the top level domain.
> www.example.com is the full url of the domain.

Wrong. www.example.com is a string of characters that may or may not map
to a dns entry. That dns entry might be for a machine, for a subdomain,
or even for a virtual server implemented across several physical servers.
example.com's webservers could be web1.www.example.com,
web2.www.example.com, web3.www.example.com .... using round-robin dns
entries on www.example.com to distribute requests across the multiple
servers.

Please, Richard, stfu about stuff you don't know and understand.

> a subdomain is properly shown as www.sub.example.com
> http://sub.example.com should get to you the same page.

Wrong. There is no rule that www.[domain] should be equal to [domain], or
that anyone should operate a server on their main domain ip.

> The use of the WWW is strictly determined by the hosts of the domain,
> not the ruling board of ICANN.

Whether www.[domain] exists or not, and what it maps to, is determined by
the presence or absence of a machine and the relevant dns entries. Note
that there's not even a rule that says a host www.domain must have a
public webserver, that's only a convention.

> Any subdomain using the TLD is owned by that person. YOU cannot register
> www.sub.example.com as your domain.

TLDs are com, uk, de, nl, ca, cn, edu, mil, gov, org .... etc.

The so-called TLDs are all actually subdomains of "." (the root domain)

Your "domain" is actually a sub-domain of one of the TLDs. Mine is a
second tier sub-domain.

> According to my hosts, I can have what ever number of subdomains I want.

You can do a lot of things in dns. I think at this point we should
encourage you to experiment just as an exercise in seeing how badly you
can fuck up your domain.

--
Denis McMahon, denismf...@gmail.com

[dorayme]

In article <koq1kn$3q7$1...@dont-email.me>,

Denis McMahon <denismf...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Please, Richard, stfu about stuff you don't know and understand.

Be careful Denis, it is possible that St Peter, at The Gates, will
reward his confidence and that this will trump being right about
things. It may even generally be that those who are mostly wrong will
get preferential treatment there. Perhaps there is a certain arrogance
about being right and precise.

Anyway, whatever, you there Gus?, let us all kneel and pray together.

--
dorayme

[Mitch Bujard]

Sorry, I do not understand. Up until now, I thought that using
www.fontmenu.com or fontmenu.com pointing to the same content, it was
seen by Google as the same site. Now, which one is considered best by
Google ?

If Google prefers fontmenu.com, it is rather easy to manage absolute
links to point to http://fontmenu.com/page.htm rather than
http://www.fontmenu.com/page.

Well. Now should I use a php index page, so I can see if
www.fontmenu.com has been used, and reroute to fontmenu.com ?

If Google is bad enough not to filter out the www, it is rather
ridiculous. But after all...

Where did you get the information from Google about that issue ?

TIA

Mitch
http://FontMenu.com or http://www.Fontmenu.com
---
You say potato, I say potato...

[Jerry Stuckle]

From my understanding, his take is wrong. Google (and the other search
engines) understand when a site is accessible by either example.com or
www.example.com. This is very commonly used on the web today.

However, it is NOT recommended to have the same information on two
different sites, i.e. www.example.com and www.example.org., or even
other subdomains, such as www.example.com and www2.example.com. These
are generally different servers with different content.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstu...@attglobal.net
==================

[Christoph Michael Becker]

Mitch Bujard wrote:

> Where did you get the information from Google about that issue ?

Maybe from <https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en>.

--
Christoph M. Becker

[Luuk]

Can you give more details about that last remark?
Why should www.example.com and www.example.org have different content?

I fail to see the reason for that, because a company can have i.e.
www.example.nl (if it's a Dutch company), and www.example.eu, or maybe
even www.example.com
If they deal properly with the different language's read/understood by
the different guest, i can see no problem in having the same content on
those 2 or 3 websites.....

[Mitch Bujard]

On 2013-07-16 19:57:59 +0000, Luuk said:

>> However, it is NOT recommended to have the same information on two
>> different sites, i.e. www.example.com and www.example.org., or even
>> other subdomains, such as www.example.com and www2.example.com. These
>> are generally different servers with different content.
>>
>
> Can you give more details about that last remark?
> Why should www.example.com and www.example.org have different content?
>
> I fail to see the reason for that, because a company can have i.e.
> www.example.nl (if it's a Dutch company), and www.example.eu, or maybe
> even www.example.com
> If they deal properly with the different language's read/understood by
> the different guest, i can see no problem in having the same content on
> those 2 or 3 websites.....

Years ago, one of my mirror sites got frowned upon by Yahoo for being
identical. They decided the mirror would not be referenced. Since then
I always make sure that pages and content is different enough to ensure
visibility. If each site has its own originality, it makes sense. In
the case of example.nl and example.eu, I would summize that the .nl
catters only to Dutch language, whereas the .eu site would be
multilingual. Data could be shared, but its presentation would differ.

That's my 2ข.

Mitch
http://www.FontMenu.com
---
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
George Bernard Shaw

[Jerry Stuckle]

Why would they necessarily be the same company? They could easily be
three different companies.

And I agree with Mitch - I would expect the .nl one to be in Dutch, the
.eu one perhaps German or French (or multi-lingual), and the .com one
English. If nothing else, I would expect the .nl to target Dutch
customers, the .eu to target European customers (perhaps Dutch, also),
and the .com the world. Different target markets would have different
content.

And if they wanted all three domains, they could always do a redirect so
that all customers end up at the same site. The search engines would
not penalize that.

I see no reason why a company would want duplicate information on all
three sites, and a lot of reasons why they wouldn't.

[Luuk]

I think those company's who do mirroring should deal with that 'problem'

and, for my example, there are enough non-Dutch-speaking people in the
Netherlands to make the .nl site multilingual ;)

[Luuk]

The *could*, but they would not have to be different.....

> And I agree with Mitch - I would expect the .nl one to be in Dutch, the
> .eu one perhaps German or French (or multi-lingual), and the .com one

The EU is much bigger that just Germany and France.....

> English. If nothing else, I would expect the .nl to target Dutch
> customers, the .eu to target European customers (perhaps Dutch, also),
> and the .com the world. Different target markets would have different
> content.

If the .com site targets another market than the .nl site, is completly
up to the marketing departement of that company...

>
> And if they wanted all three domains, they could always do a redirect so
> that all customers end up at the same site. The search engines would
> not penalize that.
>

Again, they *could*, but i don's see why a search engine would penalize....

> I see no reason why a company would want duplicate information on all
> three sites, and a lot of reasons why they wouldn't.
>

I did not talk about duplication of information.

I just started to look for some examples, the following two companies
seems to show same content on .nl as on .com (and they are not small!):
http://www.philips.nl/ and http://www.philips.com/
http://www.shell.nl/ and http://www.shell.com/

[Jerry Stuckle]

The fact they *could* makes all the difference in the world.

>> And I agree with Mitch - I would expect the .nl one to be in Dutch, the
>> .eu one perhaps German or French (or multi-lingual), and the .com one
>
> The EU is much bigger that just Germany and France.....
>

Yes but I was just using that as an example.

>> English. If nothing else, I would expect the .nl to target Dutch
>> customers, the .eu to target European customers (perhaps Dutch, also),
>> and the .com the world. Different target markets would have different
>> content.
>
> If the .com site targets another market than the .nl site, is completly
> up to the marketing departement of that company...
>

True. But it makes no difference to the search engines.

>>
>> And if they wanted all three domains, they could always do a redirect so
>> that all customers end up at the same site. The search engines would
>> not penalize that.
>>
>
> Again, they *could*, but i don's see why a search engine would penalize....
>

Because that's the rules the search engines set up. It's their search
engines - they make the rules.

>> I see no reason why a company would want duplicate information on all
>> three sites, and a lot of reasons why they wouldn't.
>>
>
> I did not talk about duplication of information.
>

You just said they had the same information on all three sites.

> I just started to look for some examples, the following two companies
> seems to show same content on .nl as on .com (and they are not small!):
> http://www.philips.nl/ and http://www.philips.com/
> http://www.shell.nl/ and http://www.shell.com/

So? Your point?

What does this have to do with the rules the Search Engine people set up?

If you don't like the rules, then create your own search engine. I'm
just trying to explain what I think the reasoning behind it is.

[Robert Baer]

My information came from raw internet experience.
Not a programmer, but made a site and "put it up" on the net, added
Google Analytics trapping in the code.
Found that (semi-ranDUMBly) mysite.com was not always trapped, so
created another GA account for www.mysite.com.
Roughly half of the uses went to one, and half to the other.
The use of http:// made no difference to Google search for my site.

It was painfully clear that GA treated them as DIFFERENT.
I have no idea and knew no way of determining WHICH one had the code
i had FTPed, and still do not know.
eXplicitly entering one of the forms did not always get trapped by GA
for that form: ie, entering mysite.com ranDUMBly got trapped as if i had
entered www.mysite.com and vice-versa.

And after my provider did a permanent 301 re-direct, there was STILL
some ranDUMB scrambling for about a month!

So, beware, the issue is likely to still be ranDUMB and unpredictable
in absence of a 301 re-direct (or equivalent if such exists).

[Mitch Bujard]

On 2013-07-17 06:51:49 +0000, Lewis said:

>> Where did you get the information from Google about that issue ?
>

> Maybe this? And not understanding it?
>
> <http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html>
>

Good reading. And I am now relieved. What they are after is not plain
and basic www.fontmenu.com and fontmenu.com but after sites that are
duplicated to deceive and artificially increase pagerank.

I understand better now.

Thanks !

Mitch
http://FontMenu.com
---
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more
useful than a life doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

[Gloops]

Lewis wrote, on 17th July 2013 16:50 UTC + 2 :
> That said, Google DOES prefer if you have a "preferred root", so, if you
> do duplicate domain.tld andwww.domain.tld, you SHOULD tell google which
> one is preferred, and then it will use that one exclusively to index.
>

Hello,

How do you tell them that ?
You send them a mail ?

[Mark Goodge]

On Wed, 17 Jul 2013 17:56:43 +0200, Gloops put finger to keyboard and
typed:

Use Google Webmaster Tools.

Mark
--
Please take a short survey on salary perceptions: http://meyu.eu/am
My blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk

[Alias]

On 7/17/2013 6:34 PM, Mark Goodge wrote:

>>> That said, Google DOES prefer if you have a "preferred root", so, if you
>>> do duplicate domain.tld andwww.domain.tld, you SHOULD tell google which
>>> one is preferred, and then it will use that one exclusively to index.
>>>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> How do you tell them that ?
>> You send them a mail ?
>
> Use Google Webmaster Tools.
>
> Mark
>

Which feature in Tools?

--
Alias

The only real problems are avarice, anger and stupidity.

[Mark Goodge]

On Wed, 17 Jul 2013 18:48:53 +0200, Alias put finger to keyboard and typed:

>On 7/17/2013 6:34 PM, Mark Goodge wrote:
>
>>>> That said, Google DOES prefer if you have a "preferred root", so, if you
>>>> do duplicate domain.tld andwww.domain.tld, you SHOULD tell google which
>>>> one is preferred, and then it will use that one exclusively to index.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> How do you tell them that ?
>>> You send them a mail ?
>>
>> Use Google Webmaster Tools.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>
>Which feature in Tools?

Site settings (one of the options on the gear tool dropdown).

[Alias]

On 7/17/2013 7:13 PM, Mark Goodge wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Jul 2013 18:48:53 +0200, Alias put finger to keyboard and typed:
>
>> On 7/17/2013 6:34 PM, Mark Goodge wrote:
>>
>>>>> That said, Google DOES prefer if you have a "preferred root", so, if you
>>>>> do duplicate domain.tld andwww.domain.tld, you SHOULD tell google which
>>>>> one is preferred, and then it will use that one exclusively to index.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> How do you tell them that ?
>>>> You send them a mail ?
>>>
>>> Use Google Webmaster Tools.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>
>> Which feature in Tools?
>
> Site settings (one of the options on the gear tool dropdown).
>
> Mark
>

I tried to do that but a message came up saying I have to verify that I
own the site but no instructions on how to do that.

[Mark Goodge]

On Wed, 17 Jul 2013 20:11:48 +0200, Alias put finger to keyboard and typed:

Click on "verify this site" from the home page.

[Denis McMahon]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2013 16:34:34 -0400, Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> I see no reason why a company would want duplicate information on all
> three sites, and a lot of reasons why they wouldn't.

Not least of which being the maintenance effort[1] - much easier to
maintain one site pointed at by multiple urls (which could then load
serve across multiple servers with mirrored content) rather than
maintaining the separate sites.

Also more resilient (if you're going to have multiple servers) if one of
the servers dies.

[1] Effort always translates to cost too. ;)

p.s. Jerry knows this stuff, I'm posting more as a follow up than a reply!

--
Denis McMahon, denismf...@gmail.com