3 ms·

I have a question: Why are these considered different sites by your algos? If we were talking ".com" vs ".net", OK, I get it. But this is about "www.domain.c

I have a question: Why are these considered different sites by your algos? If we were talking ".com" vs ".net", OK, I get it. But this is about "www.domain.com" vs "domain.com" and their http and https variants. I'm sure there's something I don't understand. Would "http:www.apple.com", "https:www.apple.com", "http:apple.com" and "https:apple.com" be treated by Google as four completely different and separate sites also to be ranked in isolation of each other? Why?

jlarocco 15y ago
"www" might be a very special case, but there are lots of times where "this.domain.com" is completely unrelated to "that.domain.com". Many sites, for example give users their own "name.whatever.com" subdomain. In those cases treating the sites as the same doesn't make any sense.
- superchink 15y ago
  True, but I think that is just the special case being asked about. Would it make sense to have an exception for “www”?
- robomartin 14y ago
  That's true, but the www/no-www/http/https cases are very likely to refer to exactly the same site. Besides, Google's algos, through crawling, should know that it is the same site. It seems unfair to punish the site for this.