WWW or no WWW?
November 25th, 2007 by MattTo optimize your search rankings, you should decide whether your URLs should have the “www” in front of them or not.
This is a topic everyone has been arguing about lately. There are advantages to both.
Reasons to use WWW
- Non-tech people need something to tell them “this is a web address.” The two things that tell them that are www and .com. If you don’t put the www in, then people rely on there being a “.com”. In an age when there is a shortage of .com domains, do you really want to reinforce the association between URLs and “.com”? You could use “http://” but do you really want to put that horrible-looking thing on your business card (or whatever you’re putting your domain on)?
- It adds balance to the URL. The three characters (plus a dot) even things out, as you have “.com” (or some other TLD) after the domain.
- When I want to go to Webmaster-Source.com, I type “webmaster-source” into the URL field and press CTRL+Enter. The browser adds the “www.” and “.com” into the URL. If you don’t use the WWW in your URL, then I have to wait an extra 3 seconds for the redirect to the www-less URL.
Reasons Not to Use WWW
- It’s redundant. You already have the protocol (http). Do you really need the pointless “www” as well?
- Your site is located at a subdomain. Subdomains look real stupid with www in fromt of them.
- You just don’t like the sound of “www.”
Whichever you choose, make sure you redirect one to the other. This is easily done with mod_rewrite.
As long as you have redirects set up properly, you can go sans www and still get the benefits of #1 and #3 under reasons to use www.
I had the no www for some time on a few of my pages. Although I set the redirect properly, I got fed up and switched back.
I don’t know, but in my case the www tells me that I’m viewing a website. Instead, if it is forum.domain.tdl it tells me that I’m viewing a forum.
I believe that is the best way to decide when to use a www or not.
It’s mainly personal preference.
“As long as you have redirects set up properly, you can go sans www and still get the benefits of #1 and #3 under reasons to use www.”
Yes, you should definitely set-up appropriate redirects.
While you can “you can go sans www and still get the benefits of #1 and #3,” the question remains: Which do you prefer as the default?
Hey Matt! Haven’t spoke to you in ages. It’s Ryan from SR.
Anway, I’ve found a good .htaccess tutorial where you can actually use htaccess to change all URL’s.
It’s either
http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess.php
or
http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php
See ya
~Ryan~
Hey, Ryan. Those are good links; I’ll have to read them more thoroughly sometime.
The main issue is search engines taking the http://www.xyz.com and xyz.com as two separate domains. It would be easier (and better) to standardise on one of them. Which one? You choose what you are comfortable with.
im unsure if this helps SEO for my site http://www.aei.ie, can anyone help on this?