Welcome to the Q&A Forum

If you have a main website (www.example.com) with a subdomain of the website (service.example.com) that lives on a separate server with a separate IP address, is there an SEO benefit/advantage to have having the www included in the url since the parent url includes the www?

Assume:

1. Applicable 301 redirects are in place on both sites

2. No duplicate content issues

Additionally, would your answer be different if the site is a .gov or .edu site vs. a .com?

In this redirect rule, what does the "$1" mean?

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