Manas T

A website or a blog can usually be accessed either through http://www.url.com or through http://url.com. Most people do not think there is any difference between the two as both of them always direct to the same place.

But search engines see the two addresses as two different sites. This can harm your blog’s ranking in search engines in the future. For example, the number of incoming links to your blog is one of the parameters used in calculating the Google Page Rank of your blog. And some people link to your domain with the www prefix while some link without the www prefix. This leads to the same blog having different number of backlinks for the domain with the www prefix and the domain without the www prefix and hence different Page Ranks for both.

Practically, I do not think there is any advantage whether or not you use www in your domain name. But the point is you need to pick up one and stick to it. It will help your blog in the search engine rankings in the long run. Normally what you need to do is edit your .htaccess file so that all links get redirected to either the domain with the www prefix or the domain without the www prefix.

But WordPress users are at ease, there is a plugin for doing that.

How to solve the www problem in WordPress Blogs ?

What is the need to fiddle with .htaccess when there is a plugin for setting your www preference. The plugin is WWW Redirect.

The continuous plague of several pages being indexed using numerous variations of the same domain name has definitely been experienced by most of us. In an attempt to remedy this extremely aggravating issue; WWW-Redirect was born. WWW – redirect allows users to opt for different redirect settings. This plugin allows bloggers to have more control over the uri in which their users access their blog. By doing so, you’re giving search engines and users a consistent link for accessing your content.

In simple words, what this plugin does is that it directs all traffic from http://manast.com to http://www.manast.com or vice versa according to the preferences you have set.

Update : As Harsh points out in the comments, you can also set your preferences in Google Webmaster tools as to whether or not, you want the www to be prefixed to your domain name in Google’s search index.

Download WWW Redirect Plugin