Www. compared to http://

[JasonRae]

Hey guys!

I'm pretty new to the community, and I had a quick question regarding URLs for my website. What would be the difference between using "http://" and "http://www." in my URL. I have done a little searching, but so far I haven't got a definite answer. Any input would be amazing, thanks again.

[TargetClick]

Hi Jason,

Consistency is going to be key when formatting your sites URLs.  If you choose to use 'www' or 'non-www' there is not a difference.  Where people run into trouble is not using 'rel=canonical' in the tag to show the search engines that 'www.yoursite.com' goes to 'yoursite.com' or vice versa.  If you do not have these tags in place the search engines will view the page are two separate pages, and you will run into a duplicate content issue.

So to recap, be consistent and use the appropriate 'rel=canonical' tag and everything should turn out just fine.

-Greg

[KaneJamison]

Greg's response is correct:

• Be consistent throughout the site - either use www or don't, but definitely don't switch back and forth.
• Implementing canonical tags is important, especially if you don't implement redirects as directed below (though you need to do both, preferably).

I have two additional concerns:

• Implement redirects. There should be sitewide redirects so that if you decided to use http://domain.com and a user types in http://www.domain.com, they are redirected. This should work for subpages as well, so http://www.domain.com/subfolder/page.html is redirected to http://domain.com/subfolder/page.html
• Be consistent with linking as well: If you decide to go without www, then make sure all of your link building activities do not include the www. in the links you use. While people will be redirected just fine, there is a small loss in value during that redirect and we want to get as much value from the links as possible. So, use the exact url you want linked, not a secondary version.