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Two URLs to a site -- one that is prefaced with www and one that is not (for instance, http://www.example.com/ and http://example.com/) -- often point to the same location on a server. But depending on the server configuration, they may point to different locations, so search engines can't assume they are the same.

This post provides tips for viewing stats if the www and non-www version of your site point to the same location.

If you have added your site without prefacing the domain with www (for instance, http://example.com/), and the www version of this domain points to the same location, try adding the www version of the domain (for instance, http://www.example.com/) to your account. You may see a wider variety of stats for the www version of the domain.

You can add a site by:

1. Clicking the Add tab.
2. Scrolling to the "If you don't have a Sitemap" area and entering the site URL.
3. Clicking Add Site.

Similarly, if you have added the www version of the domain and the non-www version points to the same location, you can add the non- www version to see stats for that version.

If the verification file still exists in the root of your site and both versions of the domain point to the same location, you can verify the second version simply by accessing the Verify tab and clicking the Verify button.

Note that having both versions of the site's URL listed in your account won't affect the indexing of your site as long as you have submitted a Sitemap for only one version - the version you want to be indexed. Don't submit a Sitemap for both versions if the location and content are the same.

If both domains point to the same location and you have pages indexed under both versions, see our Google Help Center for more information on consolidating the listings under one domain.

We hear requests for help with this often, so we'll be looking at ways to improve this issue in the coming months.

Recently, someone asked me about moving from one domain to another. He had read that Google recommends using a 301 redirect to let Googlebot know about the move, but he wasn't sure if he should do that. He wondered if Googlebot would follow the 301 to the new site, see that it contained the same content as the pages already indexed from the old site, and think it was duplicate content (and therefore not index it). He wondered if a 302 redirect would be a better option.

I told him that a 301 redirect was exactly what he should do. A 302 redirect tells Googlebot that the move is temporary and that Google should continue to index the old domain. A 301 redirect tells Googlebot that the move is permanent and that Google should start indexing the new domain instead. Googlebot won't see the new site as duplicate content, but as moved content. And that's exactly what someone who is changing domains wants.

He also wondered how long it would take for the new site to show up in Google search results. He thought that a new site could take longer to index than new pages of an existing site. I told him that if he noticed that it took a while for a new site to be indexed, it was generally because it took Googlebot a while to learn about the new site. Googlebot learns about new pages to crawl by following links from other pages and from Sitemaps. If Googlebot already knows about a site, it generally finds out about new pages on that site quickly, since the site links to the new pages.

I told him that by using a 301 to redirect Googlebot from the old domain to the new one and by submitting a Sitemap for the new domain, Googlebot could much more quickly learn about the new domain than it might otherwise. He could also let other sites that link to him know about the domain change so they could update their links.

The crawling and indexing processes are completely automated, so I couldn't tell him exactly when the domain would start showing up in results. But letting Googlebot know about the site (using a 301 redirect and a Sitemap) is an important first step in that process.

You can find out more about submitting a Sitemap in our documentation and you can find out more about how to use a 301 redirect by doing a Google search for [301 redirect].