Aliasing of web sites, where multiple domains or URLs point to the same content, is a difficult area for search engines. Are “www.example.com” and “example.com” the same site? How can you tell?
SiteTruth, like most search engines, understands redirects. We recommend, as does Google, that webmasters pick one domain name for their site and redirect all others to it. For example, redirect “www.example.com” to “example.com”. Or vice versa.
SiteTruth rates the “base domain”, the domain one buys from a registrar. SiteTruth is about site ownership, so we have to work on the basis of what constitutes “property” on the Web. That’s a base domain.
If your base domain doesn’t work as a web site, and doesn’t redirect to your preferred URL, your site may receive a low rating.
Aliasing has many special cases. Ones we know of are
– multiple domains mapped to same IP address as alternate names for the same site. It’s difficult to distinguish this from “virtual hosting”, where multiple domains map to the same IP address but to different sites. Examples include “digi-key.com” and “digikey.com”.
– sites where a subdomain is the main domain, and the base domain doesn’t offer a web server. This is rare in general, although “del.icio.us” is an example. Try connecting to “icio.us” from a browser. It’s reasonably common to find sites where “xyz.com” doesn’t work, but “www.xyz.com” does. That information is built into browsers, which will usually try “www.xyz.com” after “xyz.com” fails. An example is “qnx.com”.
– major sites where subdomains are the real sites. Examples are “disney.go.com” and “shopping.yahoo.com”.
– sites where Javascript is used on the main site to redirect elsewhere, and the base site has no real content. An example was “ford.com”, but that’s been fixed.
– sites hosted by hosting services that present the wrong SSL certificate. SiteTruth then reports errors like “(Peer certificate commonName does not match host, expected http://www.ford.com, got a248.e.akamai.net)” Try “https://www.ford.com” to demonstrate this.
We’re working on these. If you know of other special cases, please let us know.
John Nagle / SiteTruth