Q and A: Why does my site show different results for searches with and without www?

Dear Kalena...

I was trying to find out a little about some file requests on my log files when I found your blog. I tried my website using the site query thingy with and without the www. bit and got a different number on the results. I also got a few pages which say 300 Multiple Choices, they also end with the file extension .asp. I would be greatful for any light you could shed on this for me, my website has a great ranking and a great position on the search engines, I am a bit wary of changing anything just in case it disappears altogether.

Peter

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Peter

I'm not 100% sure what your question is but I'm assuming it's: "Why does my site show different results for searches with and without www?".

I've checked your site and it looks like it's suffering from the Dupe Domain Indexing Dilemma. This can happen when your server is configured to show your site at both domain versions (with www and without). See the link above for how to fix this using a 301 redirect.

Sometimes Google can logically work out which is the correct version of your site, even if it loads with or without www, but sometimes Google can't. See this post for more info. One way to tell for sure if you've got DDID and whether it's a problem, is to install the Google Toolbar and see if it shows different Toolbar PageRank for each version of your site. If so, then you most likely have a problem. That's what I did with your site. Hope this helps!


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