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Whether to use "www" or not in domains

by PaulChester
8 replies
Hi all,

A quick question for you...

A bit of background: generally on my domains I drop "www" from the domain name so it looks like "mystuff . com" instead of "www . mystuff . com". I have all the redirects etc setup so if someone does go to "www" it redirects correctly so there's no technical or SEO issues. It's entirely personal preference, I've just done it because "www" doesn't really add anything useful. Most web 2.0 sites don't use "www" either so it's not that unusual.

A friend just made the comment that when he sees my site in the SERPs he's less likely to trust it. Even though he knows it's not true he instinctively trusts sites that use "www". Looking through the SERPS all the other sites which are older, established domains like amazon use "www" - so my site does look a bit different but doesn't (to me) look dodgy or untrustworthy.

It may surprise you but this chap is quite a bright bloke and a senior SEO manager for a large company. His comments have intrigued me.

Does anyone have any views on this?
Thanks,
Paul
#domains #www
  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    I almost always use www and redirect non-www. www is just more traditional, and yes for the older netheads I think it can matter. Odd I know.
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  • Profile picture of the author PaulChester
    Thanks Jazbo - not what I wanted to hear but interesting that you agree with him. It's not too big an issue to change it but I'd prefer not to.

    Have you been on the redbull today? That's was possibly the quickest reply ever!
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  • Profile picture of the author Adie
    When I install a blog through fantastico, I always leave the default settings - which is without www. I doesn't matter anyway...
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    • Profile picture of the author Przemek Bloniarz
      I've noticed that most of my competitors use domains without www. and so do I.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by PaulChester View Post

    generally on my domains I drop "www" from the domain name so it looks like "mystuff . com" instead of "www . mystuff . com". I have all the redirects etc setup so if someone does go to "www" it redirects correctly
    I've been doing the same for a year or so. I still have a few older sites on which I hadn't (and haven't) done so, but it's my intention for all new ones.

    Originally Posted by PaulChester View Post

    A friend just made the comment that when he sees my site in the SERPs he's less likely to trust it.
    Intriguing.

    Not a perspective I'd ever heard before.

    But one I'll think about now, and discuss with other people.

    Surprising, isn't it, the perspectives one can sometimes encounter of which one was entirely unaware?
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Tyler
      In my view you should look at the bigger sites and mirror. from looking at the SERP's the majority of sites follow the use of www Also ask the question who is the target audience, if they are savvy they may not take much notice of whether you use www or not, my preference is to use www
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  • Profile picture of the author haymanpl
    Google searches for domains without the www by default. thats why alot of the big sites don't use the www
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  • Profile picture of the author zerofill
    It doesn't matter in overall search engine rankings whether you use www or not. The www is just a subdomain that has been treated like a non-subdomain by search engines for a very long time now.

    However I still follow the rule of thumb that whichever I use... backlinks are built to the site using the same.

    Just because of the simple fact that contrary to what you might hear... Google isn't that smart, nor is Bing... so try to be exact with them.

    You can at times rank both www. and non www on the same page in a couple spots to... which goes back to the search engines not being as smart as people give them credit for.
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