Advice on www. Usage Please

[Roey]

Hi,

A while back I remember there was a reason we should still use the "www." (http://www.DomainName.com) when setting up a new website (rather than just "http://DomainName.com.) Is that still the case?

Simply put, should I include the www in the set-up or not?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Peace,

Roey.

[BrittMalka]

I've seen argued that you should leave out the www.

I think the reason for choosing either one or the other is that the search engines (as far as I understood it) sees www.yoursite.com as a different site as "http://yoursite.com", so you want to have as many backlinks as possible to only one of the two.

[stormy]

Yes the search engines do see www.yoursite.com as different to yoursite.com. But note - what ever you do, you have no control over others (3rd parties) who may link to you as the www version or the non-www version. That's outside your control, so you need to some or all of the following:

• Say you've decided the www version is the one you prefer, 301 redirect any non-wwws that come in to the www version, in your .htaccess file
  
• Google Webmaster Tools is set up for both your www and non-www versions of your site and give them a preference as to which you want to be known as - that will help them to discount any that come in the as the version you don't want.
  
• Use the rel=canonical meta tag on each page
  
• Make sure you use full urls for any internal links, menus

Liz

[Roey]

Thanks!

-r*