Another deduplication question.

[SkiBum]

Where an existing website has duplicate content issues - specifically the www. and non-www. type; what is the most effective way to inform the searchers and spiders that there is only one page?

I have a site where the ecommerce software (Shopfitter 4) allows a fair bit of meta data to be inserted into each product page but I am uncertain, after a couple of attempts to deduplicate some pages, which is the most effective way to ensure that the www related duplication is eliminated sitewide - there is such a solution.

I have to own up to having looked at

,htaccess

301 redirects

webmaster tools

and become increasingly bamboozled by the conflicting advice as to which is the most effective way or combination to get rid of this problem.  too olod to learn new tricks I reckon

Your help and clarification would be appreciated as this may help head off more fruitless work.

[JoeYoungblood]

no. the rewrite rule will apply to all URLs

[Gustav-Northclick]

Quick tip:

Usually you can just contact your Hosting company and ask them to do the 301 redirect for you if you feel uneasy tampering with code on the server.

/ G

[Gustav-Northclick]

BTW, my answer is for a Apache server.... This means don't use it if its Microsoft...

[Gustav-Northclick]

Hi again!

Here we go:

Just input following to .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(replace example withyour site )

This should do the trick for the whole site.

/ Gustav

[SkiBum]

Blimey gustav - that was quick.   In the htaccess do you need to specify each separtae page url or is there a way of setting it site wide?

Many thanks for taking the time to answer.

Ray

[Gustav-Northclick]

Hi there!

Use An 301 redirect you can do this in hte .htaccess file.

Submit xml sitemap to Google webmaster tools with the correct adress(with www)

You will soon be rid of the duplicated pages if you do this.

Best

/ Gustav