Can any one explain me what is Page Rank?

www. or without www.?

Take a peek at....http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

As for www or not, the ranking is diluted if you use both so it's better (for ranking) to have just one.

Originally posted by klyve1
Take a peek at....http://www.google.com/technology/index.htmlAs for www or not, the ranking is diluted if you use both so it's better (for ranking) to have just one.

Well I know that page ranking is determined primarily by the number of links from other sites pointing to your site---although also partly by the size of your site.

But are you saying that if half of the links use www in the URL, and the other half do not, this will dilute the page rank?? If so, that's quite surprising. Is this stated specifically by Google?

I don't think Google has stated this however SE's see every page url as unique so therefore www.xyz.com, xyz.com and www.xyz.com/index.html are all different.

Take a look at one of mine:
http://www.greatbedandbreakfast.com/index.php
http://www.greatbedandbreakfast.com/
http://greatbedandbreakfast.com/

Only the middle one has PR, the others don't even merit a white bar!

[purged]

Originally posted by klyve1
Take a look at one of mine:
http://www.greatbedandbreakfast.com/index.php
http://www.greatbedandbreakfast.com/
http://greatbedandbreakfast.com/
Only the middle one has PR, the others don't even merit a white bar!

By jove you are right! Without the www there is no cache! (There is a white bar though.)

This does not necessarily mean page rank is diluted if some links use www and some do not.

However, might as well be careful...

I personally tend to leave out the www. The shorter the link, the more places it fits etc. Well I guess it doesn't matter---just pick one and stick with it.

I have read of lot of very advanced and very good search engine optimization advice and NEVER heard this mentioned before! Vewwwy, vewwwy intewwwesting....

You could always set the server to redirect to whatever you decide on and then traffic always gets the one you want.

Originally posted by klyve1
You could always set the server to redirect to whatever you decide on and then traffic always gets the one you want.

No... using redirect will ELIMINATE ALL link credits...

using redirect will ELIMINATE ALL link credits

Is that right? A "Redirect permanent" in the .htaccess file would do that?

Originally posted by klyve1
Is that right? A "Redirect permanent" in the .htaccess file would do that?

Well the most important part of the Google SERP is how many links are pointing to your page with that keyphrase.

So if the links are not in fact pointing to your page at all---but pointing to a different page that is then "redirecting" to your page---that "redirection page" will get the link credit, which of course will not do your real page any good.

I confess to being fuzzy on how .htaccess works.

However, I just read an SEO article that there is some debate about even "parking" numerous URL's at the same home page. Even though this is only one page, Google might mistakenly think you have several identical "mirror pages"---a definite no-no that will trigger spam filters. So the advice in this ezine was to set up URL forwarding pages (maybe was .htaccess, not sure) to basically erase any link credits going to those "secondary" URL's.

(I personally think it is better just to use "free URL forwarding" as available at most domain registrars for any secondary URL's. You want to make it clear to Google that there is one and only one version of each page.)

Well that is digressing a bit but the moral of the story is---KEEP THINGS CLEAN AND SIMPLE. It might in fact do no harm to your SERP performance to have half your incoming links using www and half without www. But why take the chance? Keep it simple.

And I would advise---leave out www. I have come across webmasters who are always insisting, "Please put in www when you link to my site..." Well maybe there is some other technical reason for this but so far I haven't come across it---and I don't want to have to be constantly telling people any such thing. So my little opinion, just leave out the www. Keep things simple.

google eats everything you feed it, as long as it has content and not just bunch of banners and links that has nothing to do with your site, forums get lots of exposures too on google.