Are sites that leave out www from domain at a disadvantage to domains with www in url

[SABest]

I know this has been discussed but was wondering what would be the best approach from an SEO perspective. I quite like the idea of setting up websites with domains without www but always worry that setting up domains without www has a disadvantage because user are use to referring to sites with the www included. Thus one of my fears are that users would link back using www version which will mean even if you do a 301 redirect that some of the link juice would be lost.

I know some famous sites have used this convention such as http://searchenginewatch.com/ so think it would be possible but still concerned that for new sites it would be better to rather stick to conventions.

What are your opinions about this?

[SpottedFrogDesign]

I think it's a matter of preference. Where SEO comes into play is www results getting indexed as different from non www results. As a safety measure, I might add this into your .htaccess if you are on linux:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mywebsite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mywebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will force all non www traffic to www

[SABest]

Thanks Ryan. Your right demographic plays a big role. I do however think from a direct traffic perspective keeping the www with 301 redirect should sort that. I just wonder if there are any study or stats that has been done where it compares the two from an SEO perspective. For me it would be great if I could drop the www I feel like this might be something which some companies and webmasters are considering currently but being ahead of the pack is usually not a good idea when it comes to conventions.

[AdoptionHelp]

Its a matter of preference and your sites demographics. If your visitors are young and/or tech savvy, you can go without the www and gain the advantage of having a url 4 characters shorter. If your visitors tend to be less tech savvy or generally older, you should probably keep the www because its a convention that helps identify it as a website to that demographic.