Google Sitemap Preferred Domain
Filed in: Google, SEO Beginner — March 19th, 2007
Search engines treat http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com as two different sites. Whether you www or no-www, it is advised that you choose one of them to avoid duplicated content and negative ranking.
To solve the issue, we normally set a 301 Redirection to redirect search bots from one to another. Now we can set the preference on Google Webmaster tools’s “Preferred domain”.
Simply tick your preferred domain, www or no-www then click OK button. It may take some time for Google bots to reflect the changes in their index. No guarantee though. Once done, your preferred domain will be used in Google search results.
Oh! If you are about PageRank, the preferred domain name may help Google to determine your site’s PageRank more accurately. Interesting? 
[via Link Building Blog]
