Should I include www in url, or doesn't it matter?
-
Hello Mozzers, I was just wondering whether Google prefers www or non www URLs? Or doesn't it matter? Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks for input everyone - much appreciated
-
Did you set up a canonical redirect? or did you prefer a www or non www version of your website. If you redirected to a www or non www then definitely use the one you picked with everything.
-
However, you DO want to be consistent and have either all www or no www, and have one redirect to the other, so you don't have both versions (www and non-www) indexed.
-
It really doesn't matter, but it is considered more commonplace to have the www at the front. No SEO benefits either way though.
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
Open Site Explorer - Top Pages that don't exist / result of a hack(?)
Hi all, Last year, a website I monitor, got hacked, or infected with malware, I’m not sure which. The result that I got to see is 100’s of ‘not found’ entries in Google Search Console / Crawl Errors for non-existent pages relating to / variations of ‘Canada Goose’. And also, there's a couple of such links showing up in SERPs. Here’s an example of the page URLs: ourdomain.com/canadagoose.php ourdomain.com/replicacanadagoose.php I looked for advice on the webmaster forums, and was recommended to just keep marking them as ‘fixed’ in the console. Sooner or later they’ll disappear. Still, a year after, they appear. I’ve just signed up for a Moz trail and, in Open Site Explorer->Top Pages, the top 2-5 pages are relating to these non-existent pages: URLs that are the result of this ‘canada goose’ spam attack. The non-existent pages each have around 10 Linking Root Domains, with around 50 Inbound Links. My question is: Is there a more direct action I should take here? For example, informing Google of the offending domains with these backlinks. Any thoughts appreciated! Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | macthing1 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
New website won't rank for branded keywords in Google, but does in Bing
We launched a website in October www.butterfly.com. The branded product name "Butterfly Body Liners" will not rank until page 2 of Google, but it ranks #1 in Bing. Organic traffic never really picked up so it's not easy to tell if it's been "hit" by any penalty. The strange thing is, this website: http://archive.is/PQZdO is ranking #1. This is an archived version of the site. Does anyone have any insight as to why this is happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LaughlinConstable0 -
Received "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site:" but most of the example URLs are noindexed.
An example URL can be found here: http://symptom.healthline.com/symptomsearch?addterm=Neck%20pain&addterm=Face&addterm=Fatigue&addterm=Shortness%20Of%20Breath A couple of questions: Why is Google reporting an issue with these URLs if they are marked as noindex? What is the best way to fix the issue? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
How can Google index a page that it can't crawl completely?
I recently posted a question regarding a product page that appeared to have no content. [http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-is-ose-showing-now-data-for-this-url] What puzzles me is that this page got indexed anyway. Was it indexed based on Google knowing that there was once content on the page? Was it indexed based on the trust level of our root domain? What are your thoughts? I'm asking not only because I don't know the answer, but because I know the argument is going to be made that if Google indexed the page then it must have been crawlable...therefore we didn't really have a crawlability problem. Why Google index a page it can't crawl?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Www vs. non-www differences in crawl errors in Webmaster tools...
Hey All, I have been working on an eCommerce site for a while that to no avail, continues to make me want to hang myself. To make things worth the developers just do not understand SEO and it seems every change they make just messes up work we've already done. Job security I guess. Anywho,most recently we realized they had some major sitemap issues as almost 3000 pages were submitted by only 20 or so were indexed. Well, they updated the sitemap and although all the pages are properly indexing, I now have 5000+ "not found" crawl errors in the non-www version of WMT and almost none in the www version of the WMT account. Anyone have insight as to why this would be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0 -
Non www has 110 links the www has 5 - rankings have gone
A site I'm working on resolves on the non www address and has 100+ links pointing at this address, last month it started to rank and had various phases within the top 50, this month it's totally gone from the search results. The www has 5 links. My questions Which is best? Www or non How do you fix it? Any reason why the rankings have disappeared!? It's a word press site domainname.co.uk = 100+ links www.domainname.co.uk = 5 links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | therealmarkhall0