Www to non-www redirect without loop still necessary?

[gaben]

Hi Guys,

My question is: Is it still necessary to redirect www. to non www. version of your website or other way around?
I ask because I feel that Google should be able to read these as the same by now.

Thank you in advance.
Gabe

[Hurf]

Yes, adding both www and non-www to Google Search Console is absolutely best practice to ensure you aren't presenting duplicate content.

It's also the first recommended step in your check list after you've verified your property within GSC (which suggests it's pretty important).

Here's what Google say about this:

You may need to verify ownership of both the www and non-www versions of your domain. Because setting a preferred domain impacts both crawling and indexing, we need to ensure that you own both versions. Typically, both versions point to the same physical location, but this is not always the case. Generally, once you have verified one version of the domain, we can easily verify the other using the original verification method. However, if you've removed the file, meta tag, or DNS record, you'll need to repeat the verification steps.

Note: Once you've set your preferred domain, you may want to use a 301 redirect to redirect traffic from your non-preferred domain, so that other search engines and visitors know which version you prefer.

I hope that helps.

[rayvensoft]

This is not a scientific answer and I am sure somebody can give you a more detailed answer, but anecdotally I still do it on all my websites as a best practice.   I can't say I have noted a huge benefit, but it also does not hurt and helps normalize things.

I hope this helps.