I am having a confusion which domain to go with.
domain or www.domain
I dont care about the redirections between each other. I would like to know which one is better in any ways.
Update: Greg's links below have very useful info. Must visit.
+3
A:
It doesn't matter for SEO. The most important thing that you will always redirect to one and only instance so crawler bots won't count by mistake www.a.com/index.html and a.com/index.html as double content even though modern bots can detect it is the same site and the same page of it. Without www. it is easier for user to write in address bar and easier to remember. I would go for a.com instead of www.a.com. Once you add both to your server, make proper redirection using IIS proper settings or .htaccess file on Apache. Afterwards add website to Google Webmaster tools and other common web analysis systems while it is important to set default domain in there. Set it without www. !
Good luck
eugeneK
2010-06-29 06:59:48
Even I prefer non-www over www. Thanks!
San
2010-06-29 07:07:21
www. is useless piece of information. It is main subdirectory for 99% of sites so could be avoided as any even old browser can access non-www links.
eugeneK
2010-06-29 07:11:08
I prefer non-www, too. But Sohnee has a point, non-technical users often expect www. Maybe you want to type down the URLs and have a look at it, sometimes i find one URL just "looks right" ...
Hinek
2010-06-29 07:18:35
@Hinek, we talk about urls inside of site not written urls. If you use text urls for examples visit us at www.a.com then you can use text but links to images, pages and other is totally irrelevant for end user because he doesn't see these.
eugeneK
2010-06-29 07:23:03
@eugeneK, as far as I understand, you will keep all your URLs in the same style www or non-www. So yes, nobody sees the image URLs, but they see the URL of the website in the adressbar and this should be equally www or non-www.
Hinek
2010-06-29 07:45:55
@Hinek, i deal with basic PC users who use our products. None of them ever knew address bar exists at all. User above knowing about address bar does know that it doesn't matter whether you write www.a.com or a.com, unless some smart ass mis-configured his server for only one instance of those.
eugeneK
2010-06-29 10:31:04
Actually it does... you should look at if more peopel are using/linking to your www or plain domain. Google looks at www.example.com and example.com as diffrent domains you can spesify in Google Webmaster Tools which version you want to display but you could be loosing some seo value by splitting your links across 2 "diffrent" domains... use the rel=canonical tag to help google catch some of those duplicate content issues
Carter Cole
2010-06-30 17:36:47
+1
A:
To some extent the answer to this question depends on your audience. More technical websites like to drop the www, such as jQuery.com and (of course) stackoverflow.com
If your website is intended for an average home user, they tend to expect the www at the start of the web address and you may cause confusion and possibly even dis-trust if you fail to include it.
The most important thing is that your website works both with and without (preferably redirecting to your preferred option as people may share a link to the page you are on and search engines need to know the true "source" of the page), but think about your audience when you decide which to use.
Sohnee
2010-06-29 07:00:58
I'm intrigued -- on what do you base the idea that a www-less site might engender distrust?
harpo
2010-06-29 07:03:37
@harpo, the answer is above average home user never trust geek audience like us. It's a modern anti-geek racism. www. what makes us different.
eugeneK
2010-06-29 07:09:51
I get your point. Naive user may get confused with a non-www. I still hear somebody says to other a link .. "write it down 'h' 't' 't' 'p' .. 'slash','slash'.." ;-)My doubt is, how to maintain the consistency of the non-www domain wherever I give the link? Do I have to use everywhere the non-www domain name only? In all my pages and wherever I publish it?
San
2010-06-29 07:12:08
A:
IMO, non WWW is better for blogs/personal sites etc.....and WWW is good for company sites, orgs etc...
Jumani
2010-06-29 07:44:10
I think that its all a matter of perception and usability for your target visitors....like most web savvy people tend not to use WWW nowadays.....but companies/products and all non web2.0 type sites....use it without WWW....any way is better...its just what you think your visitors would like.... :)
Jumani
2010-06-29 08:54:07