I would like to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons of using the www subdomain as your default site URL. LocalSEOGuide stated in a Twitter post that the shorter URL gets a 250% higher CTR in the SERP's. If this is true, then it would seem like you would be better off without the www subdomain. What is the distribution of inbound http://example.com links vs www.example.com links? Do you lose link juice if you get a majority of inbound links to www.example.com but redirect to http://example.com as default? I chose to use the www subdomain originally because I felt that a lot of people would link to the site using www.comparenreview.com over http://comparenreview.com. But if length is an important factor in CTR, then maybe it would be better without the subdomain. What do you think is best?
Yes. Suppose you want your default url to be http://www.example.com/ . You can make your webserver so that if someone requests http://example.com/, it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/ . That helps Google know which url you prefer to be canonical. Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content, a blog, etc.).
Ill always stick with www myself. I think most internet newbies are used to the fact that every website has www in front of it.
I usually use www as I think it looks better. As long as it is properly set up, it shouldn't matter which one your old links point to. The same as 301 redirects - done properly, you still get the link juice. Now you have decided though, it would make sense to actively build links to the non www.
My Dreamhost acc lets me set both, so no matter which one you type in, you're going to reach my site. I'd say stick with http://
I'd say the most common thing to make in writing a URL is to have the default format of "http://www.domain" rather than using "http://domain" alone... Most redirects come from mistakes like this, and some browsers supports and adds a "http://www" at the beggining...
It makes no difference really from an SEO perspective. If you're even a half a$$ SEO you'll account for people typing in both. Just pick one as your canonical (preferred) home page URL and 301 redirect requests for the other to the canonical URL. You should be doing this site wide for every one of your URLs. This is easy to enforce using Mod Rewrite rules. A single rule placed in your root .htaccess file can accomplish this site wide. Personally, I think that is total BS. People kind of expect web sites' domains to start w/ www... And when they see www.example.com most people expect that they can access it either way. Now I do agree that maybe 250% more people will type example.com in their browser as will type in www.example.com when they want to navigate directly to the site just because people are inherently lazy and/or trying to be efficient. But I don't think it has a flipping thing to do w/ click-thru-rates in the SERPs. The <title> and the snippet in the SERPs is what affects whether I click on a listing there. The ONLY thing about the URL that might prevent me from clickling on it is if it is NOT a keyword rich URL (i.e. it is some URL with 15 query string parameters like http://www.example.com/index.php?cat=123145&subcat=12341341&prodid=123413&sort=name&source=13598818...) Personally, I always go w/ www.example.com as my canonical URL. This should not matter at all as long as you have the 301s in place such that if someone asks for the non-canonical version of your URLs then you 301 redirect them to the canonical. This should be standard practice and the 1st thing you put in place for every web site you develop. I would venture to guess that 100+ times more sites on the web use www.example.com as their canonical URL as use example.com. This should tell you something. What typically determines how people link to you is how you reference your own URLs on your site. People who want to link to you will usually go to your site, navigate to the page they want to link to, copy your URL out of their browser address bar, and paste it into the href attribute for the <a> element on their site to make the link. If you always 301 redirect users to the canonical version of every URL on your site (when they request the non-canonical), the users will NEVER see the non-canonical URL in their address bar. They will ALWAYS see the canonical. Since MOST sites on the web go with the www, I'd venture to say that FAR more links on the web include the www. Not at all as long as you have the 301 redirects in place from the non-canonical URL to the canonical version of the URL. The 301 redirect from the non-canonical URL to the canonical URL tells the search engines to give the canonical URL credit for all of the inbound links to the non-canonical URL. Again, choose the one you like the best... the one that you think looks better on a business card, the one that has the best ring to it, the one that rolls off your tongue the best, the one you think users will expect. Having www on the front is not going to make the domain easier or harder to remember. People expect that every domain out there can be access both with and without the www. The key is, again, to pick one of those as your canonical (preferred) domain and 301 redirect the other non-canonical version back to the canonical URL. Personally, I like www.example.com on a business card MUCH more than example.com. Hell, even Google uses www.google.com as their canonical. That alone should tell you something.
In terms of SEO it doesn't make any difference but since common people use www I would go for www.anything...