www vs. www-less URLs

Once upon a time, Bluepanjeet complained why he can’t see the latest incoming links and comments on his dashboard. Then later he realized it was because some of the linkers are linking him using http://www.bluepanjeet.net instead of his Wordpress registered http://bluepanjeet.net. Truth is, as far as the internet, cyberspace and internet browsers are concerned, keying-in either www or www-less URLs will lead you to the same place.

According to an SEO theory, as far as search engine optimization is concerned the two URLs are of different value because each will be indexed by search engines separately. And worst, there is a possibility that you’ll get penalized by Google because Google bots are bots and bots are meant to be stupid. Why? Because Google bots would think your www and www-less URLs are different domains and having 100% same content will be dubbed as duplications. Stupid, too stupid yes!

So how do you resolve this?

Fortunately for me because my hosting provider provides me an option to either (1) add “www.” if somebody goes to http://domain.com/; (2) remove “www.” if somebody goes to http://www.domain.com/; or (3) allow both http://www.domain.com/ and http://domain.com/ work.

But what if you’re not as fortunate with your hosting providers as I am? Will you just sit around and hate the Google bots for all eternity for being stupid? Hell, no!

If you’re a Wordpress user, a ray of light could be shining upon your blog from a not-so-far distant domain. A well know WP plugin developer guised in the name Mark Jaquith of TxFx.net has created and almighty “Enforce WWW Plugin” to end your eternal suffering from Google damnation. What does the plugin do? Ask yourself that and you’ll end up brewing your own brain bits out.

Now if you’re Blogger user and since there’s no Enforce WWW Plugin created yet, switch to my DREAMHOST™ Hosting provider and you’ll never have to think about that.

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