Strange

kennyboy · Jan 30, 2009

Hi, I have a site that for some reason appears to have two url's.
www dot sitename dot com and sitename dot com. Is this normal?

mat · Jan 31, 2009

You can change in google webmaster tools how you want the site to be indexed.

-Don't set a preferred domain
-Display URLs as www.XXXXXXXXXXXX.co.uk
-Display URLs as XXXXXXXXXXXX.co.uk

joned · Jan 31, 2009

If you are a bit techie, or know someone who is, you can edit your .htaccess file to sort this out - so that whether someone types the www or not, it always resolves to the same version

IIRC it's called "canonicalisation" and is recommended by SEOs to avoid possible duplicate content issues

A google for "htaccess canonical" brings up several articles that might be useful

HTH

Cheers, Jon

dashu1 · Jan 31, 2009

This is the code you need for your htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomainname\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomainname.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Save it as .htaccess & upload to the root after replacing yourdomainname with your domain name.

Beware to check first & see if there is already a .htaccess file there (select view hidden files in your ftp) - if there is don't upload a new one, you'll need to amend the existing one.