Google Cache shows old page w/o "www" for url!!

[redbarron]

Hello,

I have been helping a client (www.flvacationconnection.com) with their seo efforts. I have been using G Sitemaps, quality inbound links, better content and internal html links. The site was moved from a .cfm format to a .html format (with some .asp for functionality). I had used a meta-refresh for the old pages as they had no inbound links that I could find and although G would not transfer any link value over with this method, I would not be penalized.

Now, G is caching a page from before the switch (note "flvacactionconnection.com" not "www.flvacationconnection.com") and it has dropped dramatically. I do not know if this has anything to do with the meta-refresh, but how do I get G to see homepage of current site (index.html)? The old index.cfm is using meta-refresh, but why is "flvacactionconnection.com" the cached address?

[Beginner]

You can access the site at both URLs. Google's simply picked the without www as the lead URL.

If you don't want this to be the case (I do recommend that you pick one and go with it) then use server side scripting or direct server configuration to put a 301 redirect on one domain variant to the other.

Ie, if someone accesses http://example.com issue the redirect to http://www.example.com.

<snip>

[Marcia]

The site is PR4 for www.flvacationconnection.com - and some really good links show up checking at Yahoo

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv1-&p=linkdomain%3aflvacationconnection.com

Just get the non-www redirected to the www. - which is technically a sub-domain (or the reverse), but most people assume sites have www - in fact I've seen in stats that some people (not web savvy folks, but that's fine) type that in as part of the search term, something lilke www widgets. Really, I do see that. You've got a choice which to use, so you could go by whichever page on that site has the most IBLs.

If you're on an Apache server you can use mod_rewrite but the easiest way is using mod_alias to do a 301 (permanent) redirect, which is an Apache server module.