External links not working

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  seopinion · Member · Mar 29, 2014 at 9:25 pm

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  Whenever I try to create a text link to an external source the link actually goes to my own wordpress website. For example, if I want to send a link to http://www.google.com, and set my href=”www.google.com”, the link will go to http://www.seopinion.wordpress.com/www.google.com, and won’t go to Google.

  I can’t find any settings to change this, and I don’t have a permalinks option in my dashboard.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  shawnajroberts · Member · Mar 31, 2014 at 4:08 pm

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  Hi there!

  Are you talking about creating a Link menu item or in a blog post? Try adding http:// before the www and this should start working correctly.

  Let me know if I can help further!

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  seopinion · Member · Mar 31, 2014 at 9:45 pm

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  Just a standard link in a blog post.
  I have tried both versions but no luck.
  I’m well versed in wordpress as I use it every day for a variety of clients but have never across this!

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  shawnajroberts · Member · Mar 31, 2014 at 10:10 pm

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  Can you tell me what post you’re having trouble with so I can take a look at your formatting?

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  seopinion · Member · Apr 1, 2014 at 8:14 am

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  The blog post is this: http://seopinion.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/how-to-write-a-blog-choosing-a-topic/?preview=true&preview_id=34&preview_nonce=491b9687ce&post_format=standard – using the Google example.

  When inspecting the element it shows a normal URL.
  I’ve found that when I create a link on my mobile it works fine, but doing it on any desktop or laptop the link tries to go internally?
  Very strange!

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  shawnajroberts · Member · Apr 1, 2014 at 2:40 pm

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  Thanks! That was really helpful! I just checked your hyperlink settings and it looks like you have not included ‘http://’ at the beginning of your URL.

  

  While the ‘www’ is generally unnecessary now, http:// is what tells us that its an external link. Just edit the link so it looks like this instead:

  

  Let me know if you continue having issues with this! :)

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  seopinion · Member · Apr 1, 2014 at 4:10 pm

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  How interesting! I manage a lot of wordpress accounts for clients and have not found an issue like this before in any of their wordpress’s. Usually it’s just a case of putting “website.com” for example, without https:// or even the http://www., shall keep you updated!

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  shawnajroberts · Member · Apr 1, 2014 at 5:24 pm

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  Interesting! I just did a little testing, and I’ve found that any address without ‘http://’ is assumed to be an internal address.

  Let me know if I can help with anything else!