If has nothing to do with your client; these URLs are treated as different by the servers. So you cannot assume the same results.
I've just compared "http://www.google.com" vs "http://google.com" using my HttpDownloader utility using
HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse I shared here at CodeProject:
how to download a file from internet[
^] (you can check the source code of it to see the techniques used).
The two responses I downloaded were a bit different. The difference was in the body of some JavaScript which contained a number of integer numbers — they were different. I can explain that. The output in the form of HttpWebResponse is generated on the server side. It could be just a copy of some fixed file stored on the server as in the case of static Web pages, but in case of Google search some server-side code is involved to generate to response. Naturally. Now, the referrer URL is known to the server-side code through the HTTP request, so the server code can behave differently. Think of "if" operator in the server-side code.
If you got an exception, you must be
doing something wrong. There can be millions of reasons. Too bad you did not share your code and the dump of exception information.
You should always do it when asking questions.
As to HTTPS,
this is a different protocol. Let's assume some Web site uses both HTTP and HTTPS. In this case, "http://www.domain.tld/directory/page.html" and "https://www.domain.tld/directory/page.html" could be
completely different unrelated pages.
—SA
Submit an article or tip