SEO Question on prefixes

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One thing that isn't clear to me is whether a site should have the www. prefix added in the url or not. What I can say from my experience is that due to SEO reasons this is very important, and I think this is what the majority of internet marketers believe.

However, is there any evidence that Google ranks the sites having www. added higher than those who don't have it?
#search engine optimization #prefixes #question #seo
  • I disagree with your belief the majority of internet marketers believe that at all.

    Actually, every single one of my sites can be reached equally well with the www in place or not. I focus my ranking efforts without it. If someone is going to type in my site name and they use www they have success. If they type it in without it, they have success. If they click one of my links without it, of course they have success. From what I have seen it makes zero difference in the ranking of a site.
  • I'm sure that having a www. or not is not a ranking factor, but you have to choose one main mirror to minimum the chance for google to think that you have duplicate content.
    Same with / and /index after the domain name.
  • It's a very long conversation mate. But I will give my answer based on my experience: Google is not treating a site having a www. prefix in the URL as special as many SEOs think. It's just that majority of the webmasters today are using URLs with www. prefix.

    Search engines don't actually care about a site having a www. or not when it comes to giving a rank in their lists. You might wanna check it here.

    So, from a ranking perspective, both are treated the same. And based on my understanding about this matter, you should also consider what's in the mind of the searchers. Most of the time, they are just typing a non-www domain in their address bar but totally expect a www. domain to appear in their browsers.

    Again, when it comes to search engine rankings, both are treated the same.
  • No, not at all. Many SEO professionals doesn't use www but just http://

    I've never used the www prefix either, and I've never had any problems outranking my competitors.

    Just remember to always backlink the same exact url (including the trailing slash), since google will see www.sitename .com/ http://sitename .com/ and http://sitename .com as different variations.

    If you type in the wrong variation of the url most servers will use a 301 redirect to send you to the correct url, however, if you link to the wrong one, you lose up to 10% of it's value.

    Also be sure to use canoncial urls.
    • [1] reply
    • Definitely. A lot of people forget about this and it's a big deal.
  • one more thing: if I have a site with a number of backlinks and decide to add the www prefix, what happens with the backlinks I have? Are they lost?
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    SEO Question on prefixes

    One thing that isn't clear to me is whether a site should have the www. prefix added in the url or not. What I can say from my experience is that due to SEO reasons this is very important, and I think this is what the majority of internet marketers believe. However, is there any evidence that Google ranks the sites having www. added higher than those who don't have it?