Include the www prefix when adding a site to Google Webmaster Central?

I am wondering if I should add the www prefix when I add a website to Google Webmaster Central. Both versions of the website (http://www.website.com and http://we开发者_JS百科bsite.com) are exactly the same so I am wondering if it makes a difference.

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As mentioned already, a domain without www will be seen as a subdomain/page. Even worse the 2 versions (with & without www) will result in duplicate content hence loosing points from Google.

You can do what Ruel & How said above but I also recommend adding a canonical meta tag which tells the search engine which page should be indexed, e.g. this means www.domain.com, domain.com, www/domain.com/index will all be treated the same rather than 4 duplicate pages.

Try to stick with www. as many places where you submit a link for your site will ask you to include www, thus your www. version of your page will get all the SEO rankings. Stick with one or your Page Rank will be split between the 2 versions.

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Choose one and only one version so search engines wouldn't be confused if your site is with www or not. I personally like without www but it really makes no difference.

Then make a redirect adding this code to .htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^.*$ http://yoursite.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

Then mark it in Google Webmaster tools.

It's not very good when half your backlinks go to www.yoursite.com and half of backlinks to yoursite.com

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It's really up to you, some likes websites with www because it makes the site look professional, and some likes without www because its shorter.

You can only use one though. Set a redirect on your choice. If you chose with www, set a redirect that redirects http://example.com to http://www.example.com and vice versa.

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"www" is actually a subdomain. I you add example.com, you covered all subdomains, eg blog.example.com. If you verify www.example.com, you need to add blog.example.com later, not sure about WT, this is generally this way.