WWW vs non-WWW gives different results on a domain

It seems like the WWW vs non-WWW gives different results on a domain. Checking for example:

http://www.somesite.com
http://somesite.com

will give different results. What is going on here?

http://www.somesite.com
http://somesite.com

Are two different URLs, two different sites as far as Google's concerned.

You are right. As for our website Cyberax, one is pagerank 6 and the other is pagerank 0 for the WWW vs non-WWW version.

The difference between somesite.com and www.somesite.com is exactly the same as the difference between www.somesite.com, ftp.somesite.com, mail.somesite.com, anything.somesite.com or www.someothersite.com.

Like I said, as far as Google's concerned, they're all different hostnames (even if they point to the same IP address).

didn't realize google saw www.mysite.com differently than mysite.com

My whole site was lacking the www. except for the main page. I thought only subdomains were different.

All the time making search engine friendly URLs, alt tags, header tags, sitemaps, all products pages, and countless directory listings.

Wondering why the pagerank of 1 would not go away and thought I saw tons of bots surfing my site they weren't really.

There is a utility in Google Webmaster Tools that allows webmasters to select one or the other. The Google documentation says that selecting one of these helps Google determine PR better.

Google webmaster tools has a lot of other great utilities as well.

Good tips thanks guys.

I ended up running my website off the non-www version because I think humans are less inclined to type it and mine is the kind of website that is member led.

It can be a bit annoying because some directories will always put a www on the url.

ya Google considers them as two different sites so it is always better to use permanent redirect between them..

Just redirect non www to www, you can do this by permanent redirection from non www to www. Google consider them as they are two different websites.

There is a simple way to get around this and alleviate the cross contamination or the lack there of between www - and non-www domains. Yes google does have a utility thats ask for a preferred domain but it you do not redirect one to the other it's null and void.

Go to your root folder and look for an .htaccess file. If you have one in there add this code to it. Make sure you skip a line before adding this code.

This is pretty easily done with an .htaccess file.

Options +Follow SymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^somesite dot com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.somesite dot com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

Now what that does is it forces all non-www into www domain.

Now this is the code I wrote for one of mine. But I am on a linux server. Check server type, the code may be different for your particular configuration.

I hope this helps

What if you redirect non-WWW to WWW?
Will the entire PR go on WWW?

Put the htaccess file in and be done with it. Redirects dont always work. The other logic that i apply to anything is "the more stuff you have on your car the more things that can go wrong".

Hope this helps

.htaccess file usually exists for personal user settings.
Okay, I'll try it:)

Yes, I am agreed with this. with the help of Google webmaster any body can decide that what would be the exact URL for his/her website and that will only considered by Google in its PR algorithm.