[thelist] google droped my http: page

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On Thursday 02 September 2004 10:14, Rich Points wrote:
> Howdy,
> I have a home page that Google has a page rank of zero, sort of. 
> Normally I get a page rank of 6.  I only see the zero page rank on
> the http:// page, if I add http://www to the url the page rank shows
> it's normal 6.  This happened in July and the returned to a 6 in
> August.  Now in September my http:// page has returned to zero again.
>  When I search for my site in Google it shows up as normal and it
> points to the http://www. page.
>
> What's going on?  Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior from
> Google?

Well, http://example.com and http://www.example.com are actually 
*different* sites as far as the URL specifications are concerned. 
There's nothing saying one has to redirect to the other or that they 
have to have the same content.

A search engine can't slop everything under one domain as the same site 
because you have domains like livejournal.com where usernames are used 
as the third-level domain, .uk where the second level domain is used 
the same way .edu and .com are used, .us where you have state- and 
city-level domains, and the list goes on.

The solution is to have one redirect all links to the other. I 
personally would redirect example.com to www.example.com (with the idea 
of having a host under that domain CNAME'd to www), whereas some people 
believe in doing it the other way around.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn