Which Do You Prefer? example.com or www.example.com

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It's been said that search engines take www and the no-www version of your site differently so you must decide which one you'll use when linking back. I personally can't decide which one I like, some of my sites I link with www, while some with no www. I guess your opinion will help me decide which one to stick with. So personally, what do you prefer, www or no www version?
#main internet marketing discussion forum #examplecom #prefer #wwwexamplecom
  • I prefer the no WWW. I don't want to spend WWW on my time typing it
    Actually, there's no matter to me.

    Ross
    • [1] reply
    • Pesonally I think that is a fallacy and Matt Cutts - the Google exec has refuted that for years LOL...........

      AND you have no control over it anyway! That is your host. If he flips the switch on your
      server that says allow non www to find you, your site will come up that way no matter what.
      On your link - I usually don't use www but thats because I'm lazy, but I would say www is the safe way.
  • With regards to SE's it may or may not have an effect so I guess the question is more of user preference.

    Here's some useful info: www. is deprecated.
    • [1] reply
    • Here is a one point that is very important if you run an affiliate program or other scripts that read/write cookies.

      If someone visits your site at example.com and a cookie is set, that cookie cannot be read by a script that is subsequently visited at www[.]example[.]com, and vice versa.

      So pick one format and stick with it.

      Note: I had to put in the [] so that the domain would appear in the forum.

      Cheers,

      Neil
  • That makes sense Neil, since www is a sub domain.

    Also, as far as I know sub domains are treated as a different site by search engines. In Google Webmaster Tools they also ask you to choose which version of your site should appear (www or no-www). So I think this issue is really quite important.
  • Always use www. example .com with sites I own, I like the symmetry. However when I go to other peoples sites I often seem to drop it an just go somethingelse.com
  • I used to do it without the www but now I just use a 301 redirect to the www page and it fixes all my problems
  • You should: example.com redirected (301) to www . example .com
  • If you youse a platform such as wordpress, it automatically redirects one to the other depending on your setting.

    For example, if you decide to go with example.com, anyone typing in ww.example.com would be redirected to the former
  • For those domain that have more than one subdomain, I prefer to have www for consistency sake since www is also a subdomain.
  • Thanks for the interesting discussion. I add the www, and keep it consistent.

    Peace,

    Roey.
  • Adding "www" to a URL is the way it was done when web addresses were used for other things than the World Wide Web. As that is seldom the case anymore, it is superfluous.

    From a branding perspective, I think it preferable to not use the "www". Furthermore, it's three fewer characters to worry about when typing the URL.
  • If you use Google Webmaster Tool, there is a setting in the control panel to let you tell Google whether you prefer them to index your site using www or without www.

    In fact, I see some discussion about an campaign to remove www. See the site here:
    www. is deprecated.

    Hope this helps!

    Damen
  • Apparently, here's a very interesting (and important) YouTube - Canonical Link Element introduced by Matt Cutts himself to fix this issue.
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    Which Do You Prefer? example.com or www.example.com

    It's been said that search engines take www and the no-www version of your site differently so you must decide which one you'll use when linking back. I personally can't decide which one I like, some of my sites I link with www, while some with no www. I guess your opinion will help me decide which one to stick with. So personally, what do you prefer, www or no www version?