domain.com or www.domain.com

Hi All,

I have a site that is setup to run as domain.com which was done by my coder. Is this going to be a problem? I know that www.domain.com is more common.

Currently the domain.com has a PR3 and I'm not sure what will happen if I switch it to www.domain.com (I image I would have to do a forward).

My primary concern is SEO, but I have heard that domain.com could cause some performance issues?

This sometimes creates problems and always is a bit of an inefficiency in the processing of web requests since it relies on the * or wildcard record in DNS. Not preferred since clients rarely cache the wildcard in their DNS cache. Meaning, every request must be looked up.

Thanks!
Ty

 

I haven't heard of that performance issue, but as far as seo goes, it doesn't matter whether you use www.domain.com or domain.com...just be consistent. Whichever version you choose, setup a redirect from the other version. While you're at it, also redirect domain.com/index.html to just domain.com (or whatever version you choose)

In Google Webmaster Tools you can also tell Google which version of your domain name you prefer.

 

I dont think it matters in regard to SEO, I just prefer the www. at the front because that is what everyone knows.

 

Make sure your redirect is a 301 redirect.

 

Dosen't matter, www looks better.
If you have a long name I would suggest having it without a www

 

www and without www is the way for you to protect a duplicate content, you should choice www or without www. You know that the url http://www.seovietnam.org and the url http://seovietnam.org have the same result.

 

The 301 redirect works well for my Sports Site, it goes from a .ca to .com .

 

You don't need to set up a redirect for changing only the www. portion of the domain it should automatically redirect it.

For linking purposes choose one and stick with it for best results.

 

I'll go to a domain with www. Everyone likes site with complete URL address. When optimizing site, I always include www in my domain and concentrate on it. Just focus to one domain name

 

its same man !!

 

Thanks guys/gals for all the input. The domain name is 14 letters long, so it does look better without the www.

I've already got people linking without the www, so if you were me would just leave it?

 

I personally prefer the www. I would just switch it over and be done with it. Just throw this in your .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Code (markup):

 

Thanks for the code! www "feels" more correct.