WWW vs non-WWW - Which one do you prefer?

I am setting up URL structure and permalinks for a new domain. Just our of curiosity, which one do you prefer, WWW or non-WWW on your domain name?

For example

or

I saw more websites using www but some removed it in their url, didn't know why. Any comments?

Thanks
David

In my opinion is a matter of personal preference and branding, some just like their domain names to look short without the www infront. From a DNS perspective www can be also treated as a subdomain, changing the name from www to without www will have a temporarily impact on SEO and backlinks, the reason for this is that both are treated as different URL's by search engines.

Hello David,

I personally prefer Example.com, however in some cases www.example.com sounds more professional and looks like a proper domain. However, it sounds like a domain regardless unless it's an unusual domain extension.

My hosting website has recently began using 'www', however I've kept my technology blog among other sites without the "www".

In general, a .fr or .co should use a www for branding, but a .hosting shouldn't as it looks strange and even more out of place that it already is.

Also, I pray to god that the admins of this site can afford the new $XXX renewal fee for .hosting, since it went up from low $xx not long ago. Any news on that guys? I can't find a info board on here for things like that or rules etc.

EDIT : Once I made this post, i noticed the 'www' was auto linked by the system, but the non-www wasn't.

Best Regards,
Kieran Cairns

HostBastic said:

In my opinion is a matter of personal preference and branding, some just like their domain names to look short without the www infront. From a DNS perspective www can be also treated as a subdomain

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It can depend on their domain names are short or long? if their domain is long, they can want to remove www from URL to make it short and clear?

HostBastic said:

changing the name from www to without www will have a temporarily impact on SEO and backlinks, the reason for this is that both are treated as different URL's by search engines.

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I heard abou this more times and they always suggest using 301 redirections to avoid loosing rankings on search engine.

Kieran2001 said:

Hello David,

I personally prefer Example.com, however in some cases www.example.com sounds more professional and looks like a proper domain. However, it sounds like a domain regardless unless it's an unusual domain extension.

My hosting website has recently began using 'www', however I've kept my technology blog among other sites without the "www".

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Yes I agree with you, I tried to check 20 sites then there are only 2 sites are using their domain without www. Seem having www in the url should be putted to make it looks professional or just a popular way for sites nowadays.

Hello,
www or non-www depends on one itself as nowadays its trending to avoid www.
But personally in my views I like the domain name with www . May be it is because I am used to it.

David Beroff said:

It can depend on their domain names are short or long? if their domain is long, they can want to remove www from URL to make it short and clear?

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Most do shorten their Domain names so they save their visitors a bit of time by removing the www and its easier to remember.

David Beroff said:

I heard abou this more times and they always suggest using 301 redirections to avoid loosing rankings on search engine.

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Sudden changes can really impact google ranking, that is the best way to avoid to avoid such issues.

I chose www. for most of my sites. I also do redirects from non www to www. do as for better seo purposes.

In my view www is best because top companies enable www like google, facebook, twitter but here when we use www redirection may the website seo. Manage redirections one of the seo factor

I would give my inputs.. when the web and internet started adding www is more like a mandatory thing or standard. Over the time search engines grew, lots of new things came into existence and the way people use the web in early 2000s is not the way they are using in 2017. Things are changed so as the conventions.

Now people do not even, type domain names, they simply open Google or Bing or other search engine, and find the brand or company website and log on to it. So the whole part of typing a domain name in address bar is decresing day by day.

Now if you want my suggestion for www or non www version, I will give you some insights from SEO experience.

Prefer non www version, here is why

- Shortens the length of domain in search results page, so that it can accomdate more information. Google shows up to 70 characters (including spaces) of a page's title in its search results.

so if your domain length is already long, then adding www. will take away 4 characters.

You can read more here: https://www.quicksprout.com/2015/04/06/does-url-structure-even-matter-a-data-driven-answer/

I would generally prefer and suggest to avoid www. as it does not matter much, if you are using wordpress then %%postname%% will do best.

If it is a news website then use date and month format.

For everything else the above format will work perfectly. Some people suggest using silo structure and all, but it is all outdated SEO.

Simply use postname format and work on content and marketing, you will get Googles shower of love. All the best with blogging.

rankmyhub said:

Prefer non www version, here is why

- Shortens the length of domain in search results page, so that it can accomdate more information. Google shows up to 70 characters (including spaces) of a page's title in its search results.

so if your domain length is already long, then adding www. will take away 4 characters.

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I don't get your points at this because www is in url while 70 characters are for the tittle that showing on Google search reulsts, it doesn't relate to www or non www in this case.

rankmyhub said:

I would generally prefer and suggest to avoid www. as it does not matter much, if you are using wordpress then %%postname%% will do best.

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You mean shorter ones are better for URL structure?

rankmyhub said:

If it is a news website then use date and month format.

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I never heard of using date and month format that benefit for new sites? what are benefits? :rolleyes2:

rankmyhub said:

For everything else the above format will work perfectly. Some people suggest using silo structure and all, but it is all outdated SEO.

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What is silo structure?

I

don't get your points at this because www is in url while 70 characters are for the tittle that showing on Google search reulsts, it doesn't relate to www or non www in this case.

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URLs length have certain limitations from user experince point of view, shorter the url more click through rates. There is something called SERP snippet, where the pixels and character count matters. Suggest you to read this for more information. https://moz.com/community/q/maximum-length-of-the-url-for-seo-75-115

and this https://moz.com/learn/seo/url will clear your queries fully.

You mean shorter ones are better for URL structure?

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Yes

I never heard of using date and month format that benefit for new sites? what are benefits?

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Its for news website, where the current affairs are day by day information, So google will know that its a news site and do the indexing properly. This format not applicable for normal websites. News websites content is not ever green content, it is different.

It is read and discard, so in such websites using data/month/year format will be good so that two news lines or topics cannot collide and it also helps in archiving pervious news items. News websites in the sense Magazines or online news papers.

Example see this website url structure: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/0...ro-system-kills-at-least-11-peopl_a_22024772/

This is a news website.

Content is of three types:

1) User Generated content (facebook and likes, adds no value to search users)
2) Evergreen content (for example, how to hard boil egg, it is same process everytime)
3) Dynamic or Current content (example news papers, where during elections there may be some kind of rumours or false news which loose its value, once the event is over, likewise day to day things like climate or weather which is not the same everyday, so it adds no value for user. Such content should use date, month and year format for better indexing in Google).

What is silo structure?

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You can learn about it here: https://www.bruceclay.com/in/seo/silo.htm

Silo is old school SEO. It defers the new seo practices like url short length and other stuctures we discussed above. Silo is not working now, as far as i know, once customer asked me to implement for him, but it did not bring any results.

Hope this helps you. Thank you.

If you wish to learn about white hat seo, go to moz, quicksprout and kissmetrics, those are good place to start learning.

I really don't like www but we are forced to use it in some cases like while issuing a SSL then you will be need to enter www to cover both www and without www domains.

https is much better and look better. We should stop using www but don't know why still we need to use it for some reason I don't know.

I prefer without www, it makes the URL short

Dewlance said:

I really don't like www but we are forced to use it in some cases like while issuing a SSL then you will be need to enter www to cover both www and without www domains.

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Can you give real examples?
I really don't understand this.

Rectified said:

I prefer without www, it makes the URL short

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Yes I also like this advantage. It saved 3 chars on the URL.

David Beroff said:

...but some removed it in their url, didn't know why. Any comments?

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Many of the sites owners don't know how to set up a site with www and many of them just use the predefined installation fields like WP where you have to put the www prefix in the domani name field if you wish your site displayed with www.

Dewlance said:

...it will not cover www. domains. Means it will only cover naked domain like example.com but not www.

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Why? a website onwer doesn't use www in their url mean they don't need www any more and even for SSL.

When "Means it will only cover naked domain like example.com but not www" is enough for them.

Why you lose money because didn't use www?

isix said:

Many of the sites owners don't know how to set up a site with www and many of them just use the predefined installation fields like WP where you have to put the www prefix in the domani name field if you wish your site displayed with www.

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According to you, how to setup a domain with www correctly?
I used to force this option with httacess and don't know if I did right.

I personally feel that you should choose the www domain. Don't go for the relatively new things/trends. New things die down after sometime. The classics stay for a while longer - much longer than the fads. Also www domain gives your website a more professional and aesthetic look as many members have also pointed in their posts (because that has been a norm when the web was born). I agree with them. So choose www over non-www.

I have 15 websites now and I am using 10 with non-www and 5 websites with www in its URL, I only use www for short domain name. I saw many popular websites using non www thus I went with this option.

I like it without the www. Not that I mind that much, but when I need to copy a link that contains three times as much characters as this post, then I find it really annoying to send it to the person to whom I'm sending it. And I hate receiving extremely long links. That's why I usually Google a URL shortener and send the link I want to have shortened.
Not that 3 w's will make it that much shorter, but it's in every URL. I'm even happier when a site doesn't even have 'http://www.'. It's only 11 characters, but that's 11 characters less I need to type and see.

Hi..
Please refer this link it can be helpful for you.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US...of_HTTP/Choosing_between_www_and_non-www_URLs