New website, to www or not

[simvegas]

I was just wondering if there are any advantages to using the www instead of just the domain name for seo.

Can these be elaborated on?

[HandsomeWeb]

There was a time when we had domain names, but there was no world wide web (am I old?).  It only made sense when we added the world wide web that we gave a sub-domain (www) to our world wide web server, after all that was what we did with our gopher server.  But everyone that says, choose your favorite, is correct.  It will make no difference.

Note: I had email before I had a mouse.

[KeriMorgret]

I believe it's just personal preference these days. Some people are dropping the www and making the non-www the canonical version since it's four characters shorter, which can be helpful if you're active on Twitter and other character-restricted networks.

[loopyal]

I have never liked www. it is a waste waste waste of time and effort.

Be sure to tell webmaster tools about your preferred version,

in Site Configuration -> Settings

[edwardlewis]

www is old skool!

get rid!

[simvegas]

I understand 301'ing from one to the other (whatever you choose to do) for seo reasons, but is there any real REASON to setup a site as a www in the first place these days??

[mediabase]

Hi Simon, As you know that both  http://www.example.com and http://example.com are seen by Google as two different sites.

Regardless of how you choose the website name i.e www or non www , we don't worry about the people,they will always find a way to visit both the www & non www versions of your site. It is impossible to handle both the cases. Inspite of this people will always find a way to visit both the www and the non-www versions of your site. It is imperative that you handle both cases.

As we know that www is a sub domain, so site without www can create duplicate content issues.

To solve this problem of duplicate content  you had to add the site in Webmaster Tools and  simply use the choose the preferred domain version: then redirect [301] the non-preferred version to the preferred one:

I hope that your query had been solved.

[Keszi]

Hi Simon,

I usually do prefer the www. version, but I believe there no major difference between the two versions when you are building up a fresh website.

Still, it is important to underline the fact, that you need to choose one of the two versions and eliminate the other one be redirecting: www -> non-www or non-www. -> www.

This way you will eliminate many duplicates from the start (and you will help your link juice flow better).

I hope it was helpful,

Istvan