: Why Google says that "www.domain.com" is different from "domain.com"? In Google webmasters tool, there is mentioned that www.domain.com is different from domain.com, and the webmaster is asked to

@Caterina187

Domain can be accessible with or without WWW as well there is no such restriction for usage of prefix.you can set the redirection of the domain, when it is accessed can redirect to Use a 301 redirect to redirect one of them (usually non-www) over to the other one. This easily avoids indexing issues with Google.

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@Kristi941

That's because www technically is a subdomain of the domain.com website. This harkens back to the days when servers couldn't handle HTTP, FTP, POP, and SMTP all on the same server (this is why you see ftp.domain.com used for FTP purposes but it also really just points to domain.com. The same for pop.domain.com, smptp.domain.com, and, more common nowadays, mail.domain.com). However, since servers are obviously more powerful, most websites don't use the www as a subdomain and simply have it point to the domain.com content.

You're able to type in domain.com because an alias was automatically created in your DNS records for you by your webhost. Most hosts do this since it's very, very common to want the www subdomain to point to the domain.com website.

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@Gretchen104

They are different because they could have different websites on them. Because www has been used since the early days of the web by convention they always have the same website on them. There is nothing special about www, it's just another subdomain.

The reason you can always get to your site is that your hosting provider has put redirects in place so that domain.com and domain.com always work, and give you the same thing. It's an extremely common thing so they do it to save you the bother.

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