With or without the "www." ?

[JordanBrown]

Is there any benefit whatsoever to having the www. in the URL?

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi, there is no added advantage or disadvantage with www in the URL. You can go either way, with or without www but be consistent throughout the website. You also set your preferred version in Google Webmaster Tools account. Make sure only one version, either www or without www returns an HTTP header status code 200 and not both. If suppose, http://www.abc.com is your preferred version, then only http://www.abc.com should return 200 and not both (http://abc.com). In this case, http://abc.com should be redirected to http://www.abc.com via a server-side 301 permanent redirection. This way, you can take care of your URL canonicalization issues.

One more thing, while doing any link building/earning activities, please make sure to use the preferred version for backlinking purposes. Please feel free to post any queries that you may have in this regard.

Good luck.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi

[Alex-Harford]

twitter.com is recognisable enough, but keeping the www. makes a URL more recognisable, especially if you're using a domain extension that people aren't familiar with e.g. one of the new gTLDs:

example.photo
or
www.example.photo

Some CMSs and forums automatically linkup text when it has the www. prefix, so you might be slightly more likely to get clickable links if you keep the prefix.

Advantages to not having it - shorter URLs, and programming-wise it's unnecessary.

Often it's down to personal preference - do you prefer the prefix or not? If you'll have subdomains it might look nicer if you keep the www. prefix for your main site.

To avoid duplicate content issues make sure you 301 redirect your non-preferred domain to the preferred, or canonical to your preferred domain if 301s are not possible. You can also set your preferred domain in Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en

I've just bought a new .uk domain and haven't decided whether to www. or not yet!