Question: I saw an article today advocating that the “right” way to do URLs is to use the www in front. But I had previously heard many others saying that this prefix was most deprecated and so not to use it. I’m curious to hear what other people think about this.
Answer: According to most SEO “experts” the www is not liked by Google, as they see it as a subdomain. Google doesn’t care as long as you’re consistent, redirect your non-preferred style to your preferred domain, and set your preferred way in Webmaster tools. However, if you’ve had your Domain / Website up for quite some time and you have results with Google, then you launch a new website you should stick with whatever you had before the re-build. You can always change as long as you 301 redirect *all* URLs. Eventually the index will update to the new style and no results will be lost in the interim.
- Use what you prefer. You can change and route around any issues with a naked domain. For the vast majority of sites, it really doesn’t matter.
- Use www if you plan to scale beyond a single server anytime soon (but you can always switch at that point) or care about cookie scoping ;-)
- Always redirect the one you’re not using to the one you are.
- Use the non www one because www just looks silly anywhere but the address bar.
- Avoid saying “dubya dubya dubya dot” ’cause you sound silly – domain.com will get them where they want to go ;-)
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Nick has a degree in Multimedia Design and over 25 years of experience working in web development and digital media. Nick specializes in architecting amazing and brilliant application solutions.
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