To www or not to www, that is the question

Hi guys and gals,

I wanted to get your opinion on the usage of www in the domain name. More and more I am seeing sites, especially with large domains, not using the www.

Probably doesn't mean a thing unless you are being ranked for both accidentally.

 

What is the difference between www and not?

 

Well IMO there is no real benefit to neither set up. As long as you have the other domain with a 301 re-direct to the one your site is on, you should have no problems with PR or links.

For example, here is my site:

Without www Blog Hosting
With www Blog Hosting

 

I don't see a redirect on your site.

 

It is, it's just two pages so you can't see it when it reverts back to http://domain

 

www looks professional well not any diff IMO

but some times it better to check if the domain works or not without www

some hosts not resolves the domain without www that should u look once

 

Easy answer
A site should always be http://www
With the htp://no www as a 301 rredirect to the first.
Always or linkbuilding is twice as hard

 

It does not always have to have it, none of my sites have it and I have a few with PR.

 

IMO the WWW looks more professional. Either way you really should choose one or the other and set up a redirect.

 

Agree with Joel, use one or the other.

www . domain .com and domain . com are completely different links according to google and even

www . domain .com/index.html and domain . com/index.html

So the above is actual 4 different pages according to google, so if you were trying to rank well for keywords using the above formats, in theory it would take 4 times as long to do so rather than just using
one only.

Of course you should not be driving all your traffic to a single page anyway, but that's another seo discussion.

Cheers



Louise

 

def www, and redirect from non-www.

 

So, according to all the www] lovers http://twitter.com is wrong? And http://tinyurl.com too? Somebody had better tell them, infact a LOT of people should tell them, they've been wrong for years! #fail

Personally I think www is getting tired. Who cares if there's www infront or not? It does save 4 chars every time, which may not be a lot, but if you're using twitter or typing/posting in a limited space (like on a smartphone) then you know the benefits of the abbreviated URL.

As for picking up the phone on a regular basis for marketing purposes and having to spew out those additional 9 syllables... it gets tiring. Techs tend to say dubdubdub but if your domain is whatever.com then there's an inclination to put simply whatever.com in the address bar. Makes sense doesn't it? Sure, the correct pointing will help if you insist on having a www but it makes more sense to optimise IMHO so cut the crap, cut the www.

As for www. whatever.com looking more professional, up until the 60s wearing a hat with your suit looked more professional. Times change.

Pick one or the other and point one to the other, whichever you're going to use.

Just my 3.5 cents worth

 

I had research that when we have website without "www" it gets better positioning in Yahoo.
Exmple - search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu4yL6KJJVNEAOQSl87UF?p=COMPUTER+HELP+WEBSITES&fr=sfp&fr2=&iscqry=
On this page there are 4 links which are without "www"

 

In my opinion too, 'www' is fading out ... with the possibility of open extensions around the corner ... am sure very few people will be using it in couple years ... it's just extra

I would prefer to just type (for example) blog.malta instead of www[dot]blog.malta

 

what's open extensions?

 

I much prefer the non use of www and simply redirect when www is used. It's a real pain typing those extra four characters.

 

I dont use www in my site ... only difference is that google treat both as differnet page

 

Without looks shorter.