www or without www

Mitsakis

13 years ago

i don't think google ranks your site based on that.
it would be very dumb for them to do that.

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YasirYar

13 years ago

It doesn't make a difference because even if you type in the url in the address bar without a www, it automatically puts it there for you. It is always a safe bet to put in the full http://www. before a domain name when working with softwares because that tends to work better.

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Cideas 13 years ago
Originally Posted by YasirYar

It doesn't make a difference because even if you type in the url in the address bar without a www

That's true for the http part, not for www though.

Anyways, I use a simple .htaccess script that rewrites to www version of a URL anytime my server gets a request for non-www version, for several reasons - first off, the pagerank I was getting before I started doing this was split between the www and non-www versions (I think Google fixed it later, but you never know; I can only guess whether or not it negatively affected my SERP's), most scripts don't share cookies between www and non-www version and it causes problems etc.

You can find the .htaccess script below, just don't forget to change the domain.com to your domain.

Also replace the hxxp with http and yyy with www (can't post links just yet) ;-)
Code:

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com RewriteRule (.*) hxxp://yyy.domain.com/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]
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AmoooorLin

13 years ago

I've read a WSO ebook that advices this in the content, the author says, if your domain is not set to www, you need to promote your site without the WWW or your Backlinks have no credits to your site's position.

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backlinkloop 13 years ago

I always set my default to without the w Google always indexes my sites without it as well. However, I noticed that Google themselves is indexed with the W.
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Daws0n

13 years ago

Originally Posted by AmoooorLin

I've read a WSO ebook that advices this in the content, the author says, if your domain is not set to www, you need to promote your site without the WWW or your Backlinks have no credits to your site's position.

that's more of a canonical discussion than "content"

you might need to edit .htaccess in order to redirect all without www hits to your www url. word press makes thing easy by doing this automatically for you. what i mean to say is, you don't to worry about canonical urls when blogging with word press.

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MEMORIES89

13 years ago

Originally Posted by AmoooorLin

I've read a WSO ebook that advices this in the content, the author says, if your domain is not set to www, you need to promote your site without the WWW or your Backlinks have no credits to your site's position.

Thanks to all those who took part and tried to answer

hmm that is a bit of relvent answer for me, BUT my main concern is that if we've site on www and we build link towards www will it bring more good things ?

I really have heard it on other places.

Thanks
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mywebwork

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MEMORIES89

BUT my main concern is that if we've site on www and we build link towards www will it bring more good things ?

NO!

Once again, please look at the posts that UMS (Peter) and Alexa have made. In regards to SEO or other "good things" there is no difference - just stay consistent!

In terms of the way it looks to your viewers "www" is a thing of the past, most of us stopped using it at the turn of the century. It's completely unnecessary, it's original purpose was to indicate "world wide web" but when was the last time you heard that old expression?

Technically "www.yoursite.com" is a sub-domain of "yoursite.com" and, as was pointed out here, could actually host different content than the main site. Practically it never does. But remember, search engines will see it as a different entity - this is why it is important to stay consistent.

There is nothing wrong with using it, but for a new site its pointless. But if you choose to use it (or worse, choose to believe some voodoo about it being "better") than just stay consistent. And you'll do just fine.

Bill

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MEMORIES89

13 years ago

hmmmmmm

YOU are write I my self prefer to go on site without www, but still many marketing are using www mostly.

as you can see on the warrior forum it self.

Originally Posted by mywebwork

NO!

Once again, please look at the posts that UMS (Peter) and Alexa have made. In regards to SEO or other "good things" there is no difference - just stay consistent!

In terms of the way it looks to your viewers "www" is a thing of the past, most of us stopped using it at the turn of the century. It's completely unnecessary, it's original purpose was to indicate "world wide web" but when was the last time you heard that old expression?

Technically is a sub-domain of and, as was pointed out here, could actually host different content than the main site. Practically it never does. But remember, search engines will see it as a different entity - this is why it is important to stay consistent.

There is nothing wrong with using it, but for a new site its pointless. But if you choose to use it (or worse, choose to believe some voodoo about it being "better") than just stay consistent. And you'll do just fine.

Bill

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mywebwork

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MEMORIES89

but still many marketing are using www mostly.

as you can see on the warrior forum it self.

Keep in mind that the Warrior Forum was launched in 1997 - back then "www" was still very common. To change it now would kill the sites excellent Google ranking, for exactly the reasons outlined in this thread.

In 2011 "www" is an outdated and unnecessary addition to your URL. Unless your primary audience consists of people who have just awoken from a 10-year coma!

:rolleyes:

Bill

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Sam Meyers

13 years ago

Originally Posted by mywebwork

Keep in mind that the Warrior Forum was launched in 1997 - back then "www" was still very common. To change it now would kill the sites excellent Google ranking, for exactly the reasons outlined in this thread.

In 2011 "www" is an outdated and unnecessary addition to your URL. Unless your primary audience consists of people who have just awoken from a 10-year coma!

:rolleyes:

Bill

Couldn't have expressed it better.

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MEMORIES89 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Sam Meyers

Couldn't have expressed it better.

I guess soo nothing more then this !
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Mitsakis

13 years ago

just make sure that the bare domain URL redirects to the www URL (or the opposite)
If you don't do that google will see 2 different sites and thats bad for SEO
(mainly bacause backlinks to the bare domain site will not count for the www site)

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UMS

13 years ago

Lot of confusion and misinformation here.

It's pretty simple.

1. Make sure you build your backlinks to www or non-www. Just be consistent. Choose one or the other.

2. Ensure that your www redirects (301) to non-www or vice-versa depending on your preference. Wordpress automatically does this for you, otherwise you need to create a redirect in a .htaccess file.

That's all there is to it. No rocket science involved.

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Mitsakis

13 years ago

Originally Posted by UMS

Lot of confusion and misinformation here.

It's pretty simple.

1. Make sure you build your backlinks to www or non-www. Just be consistent. Choose one or the other.

2. Ensure that your www redirects (301) to non-www or vice-versa depending on your preference. Wordpress automatically does this for you, otherwise you need to create a redirect in a .htaccess file.

That's all there is to it. No rocket science involved.

exactly...

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iminaction 13 years ago

I have read this also in Google Webmaster FAQ. No matter what we choose - www or non-www - but stick to it, especially for backlink purposes, or your backlink efforts not reaching its maximum benefits.

Edit .htaccess also will help to redirect wrong address.
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nihittuli

13 years ago

google differentiates between www and without www. What you can do is put a canonical tag in your index page. E.g I have my website selling Shaggy Rugs and it contains a canonical tag in the head section.

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DanielDeus

13 years ago

UMS is spot on. It really doesn't matter either way, just stick with it and let Google know which it should use, to avoid splitting the categorisation of your back links etc

FYI I have a worthy adversary for a competitor in one of my businesses. I use www, he uses without the www. We bounce around each other in Google. Usually I am at #1 and *sometimes* he is

Once you have made your choice, stick with it for all backlinks you get - but if you do the things below, this matters less...

If you have a WordPress site it is really easy to set which to use. In Settings > General you can specify the URL of your homepage and your site. Set it to either with or without www

Similarly, in Google Webmaster Tools at www.google.com/webmasters/tools specify to Google which one you want to use - with or without www

For the canonical question, again if you are using WordPress, the simplest, quickest solution is with the All In One SEO plugin and set it to use canonical URLs

Hope that helped

* Daniel Deus

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robbiestone 13 years ago

It should't matter which but I prefer to use www, it's what most people are used to

If you are link building, make sure you link the correct version to, linking to non www won't do much if your site is on www

On wordpress, you can easily change it when you first install it by changing it in the general settings in two places. Make sure it is in the two places, if you only change one of them then it will hash up your install

Rob
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Mike Baker

13 years ago

In the eyes of Google it doesn't matter as already said, but personally I like to make sure they have www in them for one reason. When I add a url into the address bar of any browser I use a keyboard shortcut that I'm sure a lot of other techie people will use when doing the same. How I do it is like this: Type the url without any http or www or domain extension. So if I was going to Microsoft just type in microsoft, than all you need to do is press and hold the Control key and then press the Enter key. This will add the www to the beginning of whatever is in your address bar and it will also add .com to the end. If however your domain name ends in anything but .com then this technique won't work.

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alissa beno

13 years ago

One more time..

www is a subdomain! So i suggest you rank your top domain.. so without the www!

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JRemington

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MEMORIES89

Hi,

I've asked this question a lot many times and tried to search it online but didn't found a good answer.

What is good to have www in address or not ?

Or if we've without www is there any harm ?

I'm asking as regard to search engine optimization.

thanks

With or without www.

With or WITHout www ahaaa..I can live..

-------------

I'd say with

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What you're not selling your products in different languages yet?

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drumguru69

13 years ago

you should ALWAYS redirect one of the two sites to the other! (google sees these as two different sites... http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com).... they are the same for everyone that visits but not for search engines...

put a 301 redirect on one of the two and be consistent with which one you use and backlink to.....

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dogmachris

13 years ago

Hey you people saying, that google doesn't care... who told you this B.S.?

www is a subdomain technically and google treats subdomains and domains not the same way. If your site is accessible with and without www and links point to both, google will assign half the PR to both.

Set up canonical URLs and make sure, that your website always shows up either with, or without www, but it shouldn't be possible to display www yoursite com, as well as yoursite com.

It's gonna cost you ranking.

Thanks
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JRemington

13 years ago

Originally Posted by dogmachris

Hey you people saying, that google doesn't care... who told you this B.S.?

www is a subdomain technically and google treats subdomains and domains not the same way. If your site is accessible with and without www and links point to both, google will assign half the PR to both.

Set up canonical URLs and make sure, that your website always shows up either with, or without www, but it shouldn't be possible to display www yoursite com, as well as yoursite com.

It's gonna cost you ranking.

All my sites are accessible with or without www. So from what you're saying, I'm losing ranking by splitting it through the middle?

Do you have any Google statement or anything which backs it up? It's not that I don't believe you, I want to be sure.

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What you're not selling your products in different languages yet?

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onlinecasinodeck

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MEMORIES89

Hi,

I've asked this question a lot many times and tried to search it online but didn't found a good answer.

What is good to have www in address or not ?

Or if we've without www is there any harm ?

I'm asking as regard to search engine optimization.

thanks

Using a www is a good practice on SEO, and human/people always thinks that every domain starts with www., that's why we implement using www..

Thanks

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pennyroll

13 years ago

I made this mistake early on with pennyroll. I had it set without the www When I looked at Google webmaster tools "Fetch as Googlebot" I found I was getting a code 302 temporary moved redirect which is not a good thing. 301 permanently moved is fine but 302s not fine. So from my personal experience I recommend using the www

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peterjohny

13 years ago

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Alexa Smith Banned 13 years ago

I can hardly believe some of the guesses and misinformation and confusion in this thread.

All that anyone wanting to know the answer needs to do is to read Peter's post above (#9).

It doesn't matter whether you use the www or not, as long as you make a choice and stick to it, redirect whichever one you're not using to the one you are using, and do all your SEO for the one you're using.

I used to use the "www" versions, but changed my mind a couple of years ago - on realising that the "www" added absolutely nothing and was completely unnecessary - and since then I don't use them at all (other than to redirect them to the non-www versions). For my older sites, of course, I've continued to use the www-version I was already using.

They're two separate url's. There's actually nothing to stop you from putting up two different sites on them, if you really want to. But just choose either one, and use that for your site and for your SEO. Problem solved.
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Kronom

13 years ago

Thanks MEMORIES89, I have asked the same question today, but the warriors did not take it up. now I know that it does not matter as long as your backlinks are adequately configured to reflect that.

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FileRev

13 years ago

I prefer without www. but it doesn't matter.

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onegoodman

13 years ago

Both are similar to google, if you have been using google webmaster tools, you have the option to display it your website on search engine up to you with or without www. If you check the option you will find out that google is not giving any preference not even in its guideline for SEO

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Sam Meyers

13 years ago

For SEO without www is preferred.

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MarkJones

13 years ago

There is no real answer to this question unfortunately.. It's more of a personal preference.

I prefer my domain's to have the www and have the non www redirect to the www which is easy to do if you are using cpanel or know how to edit your htaccess file.

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Domainate

13 years ago

I would say short domains are better suited on non-www to emphasize their shortness (shorter like maybe 9-10 chars or less) and longer may as well go with www as it'd look more professional. As has been said before though, it doesn't REALLY matter except that you stick with only one of the two and make sure all your links go to the one you select, and that you 301 redirect the one you're not using to the other.

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g36

13 years ago

There's no difference really. I have sites that use www and sites that don't, no difference. Although I read that you need to redirect to either www or non www to avoid content duplicate penalty. I read it maybe a year ago.

BTW, you can also set your preferred URL, www or not in google webmasters tool.

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cyong

13 years ago

i am not too sure which one is better, but out of all my websites i noticed that those without www always rank better. But this may not 100% be the www reason, it may also due to competition..

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haha0212

13 years ago

i prefer to add www

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www or without www

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