www v. no www

As far as I am aware it makes no difference to SEO at all, but if launching a new site where indexed pages are not an issue, would it be better to use a www.sitename.com or sitename.com for the forum?

I am talking specifically from an SEO perspective rather than user preference here.

Originally Posted by JohnnyBGood

... if launching a new site where indexed pages are not an issue, would it be better to use a www.sitename.com or sitename.com for the forum?

I am talking specifically from an SEO perspective rather than user preference here.

Originally Posted by JohnnyBGood

As far as I am aware it makes no difference to SEO at all

Correct.

Okay, so if it is definately not an issue for SEO, is there any particular reason that it seems more people are opting for the sitename.com option nowdays as opposed to the traditional www.sitename.com one?

www. is deprecated.

Google uses www. ...

I didn't use www. on my latest forum that is 2 months old now and i am having incredible SE spots for important keywords i targetted.

Originally Posted by briansol

www. is deprecated.

Brian, I read the blog that the url links to, and I still can't see any real advantage or reason to remove the www. Maybe you could help my simple self out and give me a few reasons?

Originally Posted by Mert Gökçeimam

I didn't use www. on my latest forum that is 2 months old now and i am having incredible SE spots for important keywords i targetted.

Mert, what was your reasoning for not using the www?

Effectively, www is a subdomain.

back in the day (and true today on iis... go figure) setting up a host header required the www to point to the web root. You may still find sites that work on www.site.com but you get a site not found on site.com

on apache, www is the assumed default 'web directory'.
on iis, you need to create a 2nd virtual host header.

using www is similar to using site.com/index.php instead of just site.com/. It's the 'default' document so to speak.

it's logical too.
if you have site.com and subdomain.site.com you would assume site.com to be the root. subdomain1.site.com and subdomain2.site.com doesn't make sense, as there's no real root. This is effectively what you get with using www.

simply put, it's more typing for nothing.

google and a lot of big names still use it, simply because that's what 'users are used to'.

The wheel does roll if you don't turn it.

none of my sites use www

Check the WMW thread on the subject (first result here: no more www).

Okay, so now I am using the following .htaccess code to redirect from all www.sitename.com to sitename.com.

Code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.spacedrecall.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://spacedrecall.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I know *very* little about commands in the htaccess fole, so I would appreciate some feedback on whether I am being daft or not.

While that works, it's a little too specific.

that says 'if its www, go to non www'.

what you want it to say is:
'if its not non www, go to non www.'
that way it catches EVERYTHING, including a parked domain, etc that you may have.

Code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourdomain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

! means 'not'
^ means 'start of string'

Will this not kill any Google ranking that I may have achieved during the 3 weeks my site has been up? ( Changing from www to non www )

Brian, your code would preclude you from using any subdomains on your site (like forums.domain.com, blog.domain.com, etc.), correct?

Originally Posted by bernard

Brian, your code would preclude you from using any subdomains on your site (like forums.domain.com, blog.domain.com, etc.), correct?

Nope. Sub-Domains won't be affected by this.

Thanks Brian. I changed my .htaccess file accordingly.