I receive hosting from the company that does most of my professional webmastersing.

I receive thrird-level hosting for my www.mydomainname.com (http://www.mydomainname.com) Web site at a modest fee.

Problem is when my third-level domain is entered in a browser as a second-level domain (without the qualifying www. prefix) another of the company's domains appears.

I think that I can get people used to using the qualified www.mydomainname.com (http://www.mydomainname.com) but what about the search engines.

I heard that SEs (rumored that AltaVista) is going to force second-level domains. If that were the case, my site would become invisible.

Am I totally off-base? Am I missing something? What do I do?

If you own that domain then have them fix it so that with or without the www it will go to your website.

This sounds like a classic case of a shared IP system. Basically when someone enters www.yourdomain.com (http://www.yourdomain.com) or yourdomain.com in their web browser, a DNS server is queried to find the IP address of the site. So for eg.

HostInvestigator.com - 216.167.56.224 www.HostInvestigator.com (http://www.HostInvestigator.com) - 216.167.56.224


The request is then direct to server with the corresponding IP address. Some hosts offer a unique IP with every domain, so whatever domains point to that IP the webserver will respond (with the correct site). However due the shortage of IPs many web hosting companies use shared IP whereby more than one customer shared the same IP.
www.whylistentome.com (http://www.whylistentome.com) - 216.167.56.224 www.whatdayisittoday.com (http://www.whatdayisittoday.com) - 216.167.56.224 www.mycompany10.com (http://www.mycompany10.com) - - 216.167.56.224

Then when the web server receives a request, it looks for the header inside the request to see what site sould be sent. In this case both www and non-www point to the correct webserver, however because they are using a shared IP system the webserver also has to be setup the respond to the correct domains. Currently your webserver will be setup like:
www.yourdomain.com (http://www.yourdomain.com) - c:\sites\client15\

Ask your web hosting provider to modify their web server configuration so the non-www version of your domains points to the correct directory/site. Or better yet ask them to put you on a static IP.

I'm sure their are some better explanation on the net, sorry for the confusion :)

It's a simple matter to fix. On Unix/Linux systems, there is a file that directs domains to the proper directory (I think it's access.conf but I forget. It could be httpd.conf). If a domain is specified with and without the www in this file, then you'll have no problem.

I believe that what's happening is that the IP address you share is registered to the domain that comes up when the www is not used on yours. When your domain's location is specified without the www, the system doesn't know exactly where to send inquiries. The IP address you share is as close as it can get.

I think your fears of Alta Vista dropping the www are groundless. The job of any search engine is to find sites, not hide them or force them to conform to dictates of any search engine.

[This message has been edited by Duster (edited 04-06-2000).]