"WWW" versus non "WWW" on domain

[Kingalan1]

We plan on migrating our site to a new shorter domain name. I like the idea of removing "www" to gain an additional 3 letters in the URL display.

Is there any disadvantage of doing so from a technical or SEO perspective?

Thanks, 
Alan

[nhhernandez]

Hi Alan, I don't think the extra 3 spaces would affect your SEO / rankings tremendously. Bots would still crawl and recognise the keywords in the URL. If you're after visibility on SERPs, you can optimise your meta title and description in a way that your brand & keywords are visible and clickable. As the meta title font is heaps bigger than the URL and description, that would be the first thing searchers see. Also, I doubt your URL will get truncated in SERPs with the extra 3 characters. Hope this helps!

[Kingalan1]

Hi Nikki:

By not using "www" my objective would be to save 3 spaces (valuable real estate) to improve visibility of longer URL. Any significant upside to this? I don't see this as common so I am not certain if there is.

Any thoughts? Thank! Alan

[nhhernandez]

Hello there, according to this guide there is no SEO benefit with choosing one over the other - it all depends on preference. Whatever you choose, let Google know your preference through Google Search Console. With regards to technical differences, adding www acts as a hostname that helps with DNS flexibility, restricting cookies etc. non-www doesn't have the same technical advantage according to the guide.