I have noticed a lot of the big websites leave out the www. in their URL, so for example... http://website.com Code (markup): Is there any reason they do this? Does it help in better SEO or something, or is it just a matter of personal choice?
Matter of personal choice. If you do take that route, ensure that the www version is redirected to the non www version.
It is a personal decision, but it can affect your SEO in serious ways if you are not paying attention. For Google, www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com are two different domains and some people are going to link to you using the "www" and some won't put the "www". Whatever you decide, you have to put a 301 redirect from www.yousite.com to yoursite.com or the opposite to make sure you don't lose some important backlinks. Otherwise, it's your choice Ben Tremblay.
Alright thanks for the info guys. Very useful. At the moment, all my sites have mod rewrites so domains insert the WWW before the URL, so I don't end up with wasted PR going to the non WWW version. Cheers.
Yep Either is equally as good from an SEO/ranking perspective. Simply pick one as your canonical or preferred form and then 301 redirect page requests for the other form to the canonical form.