Discuss Domain with WWW or without?

Chris Lee

10 years ago

They're the same. Doesn't affect SEO.

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Lukegw

10 years ago

No it doesn't make a difference, however very very important to let search engines know what is what if you use both...

You don't want Google to see you as www. and then also see without and penalise you for duplicate content.

On print i drop the www. and any time that is accessed, it does the change to www.

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SEO Power

10 years ago

They both work, but WWW is the industry standard, so I would use the WWW version and implement canonical urls (make sure the non-WWW version redirects to the WWW version.

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imshazia

10 years ago

Just chill, both www and non-www are equally effective.

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SEO-Dave

10 years ago

The difference is minor with non-www being slightly better.

Google uses keywords within the URL as a ranking factor and the www counts as a word, so unless you are targeting www SERPs** the non-www is slighly better.

** Recently registered www-news.co.uk (note the hyphen) for a news site, couldn't get news.tld in a tld I wanted and www news is a SERP with traffic.

Note: this is picking hairs, it's a tiny difference. For a site already running under www do NOT change it. For a new domain go with non-www.

BTW www is a sub-domain of the main domain. www.example.com is no different to random.example.com, conventionally websites have tended to use www. for a website, ftp. for ftp, mail. for mail.... you can have two separate sites running at example.com and www.example.com.

David

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BenJackson 10 years ago

Makes no difference, but don't URLs look so nice and balanced with the "www" on the left:

www.racecar.com

mmm symmetry
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Zenoth

10 years ago

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

The difference is minor with non-www being slightly better.

Google uses keywords within the URL as a ranking factor and the www counts as a word, so unless you are targeting www SERPs** the non-www is slighly better.

That's not true.
Search engines does not count www as a word, unless the www it's inside the domain name like:
www.www-example.com
First www. it's not seen as a word.

It's really up to you if you like to use www or non-www version.
For a long domain name I usually choose the non www version.
For a short domain name I like to use the www version.
Regardless of the chosen version, you should do a 301 redirect from the unselected version to the selected version so that the search engines to see both versions as a single site and not two separate domains.

Some big sites use www version, other use the non-www version.

Originally Posted by Adenan

just make sure when you do link building promotion, use your right url..if you use WWW, so include it with your promotion..otherwise, you're just wasting your time..dont let the uncle G penalise you for such a mistake..

With a 301 redirect you won't have this problem. So, you will be free to use any version when creating backlinks because the pagerank will be transferred to the chosen version.

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orangedmcompany

10 years ago

All the above information about www and without www is correct and helpful you can read it is the one of the best answer above.

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jackluter

Banned 10 years ago

Not at all domain name with www or without www will not effect in seo.

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mindtricks18

10 years ago

Before we take this discussion further, your site must work with www or without the www. For the sake of SEO & canonical/duplicate content issues, you should choose one domain option and redirect when the other is used...

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johndougs

10 years ago

It makes a lot of difference if you use the WWW or choose to leave it out for your domain on your web hosting server. Use one or the other and stick with it for the rest of the sites life. You will find that WWW ranking is different to one that has no WWW for that domain.

WWW is a sub-domain of the main domain name and as such search engines refer to them as separate entities.

However, as far as cosmetics is concerned it is perhaps good to stick with a WWW in front of your domain if your domain name is short i.e less than 15 characters. I drop off the WWW if I have a domain name with many characters and redirect any reference to www.domain.com to domain.com on the server (hosting server) and stick with this format.

When searching on Google or other major search engines they do have the same results
ie. site:www.domain.com returns the same as site:domain.com on Google. But, that cannot be said the same with ranking stats on Google.

Cheers.

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NSA

10 years ago

It is a pure question of choice. Same function.

However Google prefers for itself the style including the WWW:
www.google.com

Twitter goes without:
https://twitter.com

Completely your choice. Just make sure to have a cannoncial redirect from one to the other.

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FatBlack

10 years ago

Originally Posted by NSA

It is a pure question of choice. Same function.

However Google prefers for itself the style including the WWW:
www.google.com

Twitter goes without:
https://twitter.com

Completely your choice. Just make sure to have a cannoncial redirect from one to the other.

I think this is a more fair comparsion:

However Google prefers for itself the style including the WWW:
https://www.google.com

Twitter goes without:
https://twitter.com

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UMS

10 years ago

Originally Posted by johndougs

It makes a lot of difference if you use the WWW or choose to leave it out for your domain on your web hosting server. Use one or the other and stick with it for the rest of the sites life. You will find that WWW ranking is different to one that has no WWW for that domain.

Incorrect. So long as you have a 301 redirect in place, there is no difference.

WWW is a sub-domain of the main domain name and as such search engines refer to them as separate entities.

Incorrect. In almost all cases, www is an A record (i.e.: hostname) and not a sub-domain.

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extrememan

10 years ago

Here's my simple answer! Use one or the other. But don't use both. If your planning on building back links to your domain stick to www. or your url only.

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ahmansoor

10 years ago

The important thing is select one version which sounds cool to you (or your audience)! - do not use both ones for different pages!

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nizamkhan

10 years ago

You can check out this resource:

WWW vs non-WWW for your Canonical Domain URL – Which is Best and Why?

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John Romaine

10 years ago

It makes no difference. What matters is you set the preferred domain and ensure other measures are place to consolidate link equity

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Adenan

10 years ago

i prefer to use with WWW because it is the standard of most websites on the net..i also have "dilemma" before regarding this matter..what i did at the time is, i surf all major websites such as google, facebook, alexa n many others to check for their domains..my conclusion is most of them (more than 95%) put their domains with WWW...

after all, it's up to you man to decide.. :-)

just make sure when you do link building promotion, use your right url..if you use WWW, so include it with your promotion..otherwise, you're just wasting your time..dont let the uncle G penalise you for such a mistake..