Whenever you create a website or a blog it usually can be accessed either through “http://www.domain.com” or “http://domain.com”. While this feature might appear useful at a first sight (since people can type whatever version they prefer) over the long run it will harm your search engine ranking.
The problem arises because Google and other search engines view the two versions as two distinct sites, even if they have the exact same content (technically, in fact, the “www” denotes a subdomain that could point to different content).
Search engine ranking is based, among other things, on the number of incoming links to your site. If you keep the two versions available some people will link to “http://www.domain.com” while other people will link to the “http://domain.com”, basically splitting your backlink count.
Populicious, a site that lists the most popular sites on Delicious. If you take a look you will notice that Digg is listed both at the 7th and 10th position. This happens because the list treats “http://www.digg.com” and “http://digg.com” as two different sites. Shoud only one version be available the combined number would place Digg on the first position of the list.
How do you solve the problem for your blog? The easiest way is to set up a “301 Permanent Redirect” from the “no-www” version to the one with “www”, or vice-versa. Once the redirect is in place every time a visitor types http://domain.com he will automatically be redirected to the “www” version.
By the way, if you are wondering whether you should go with or without “www”, it does not matter. The important thing is that you pick one and stick with it.
Update: Check out the article “How to setup a 301 Redirect”
About Mark
Mark is an digital entrepreneur from New York City who recently acquired DBT. He started his ventures buying growing then selling several businesses and content blogs on Flippa. A perfect night for him constitutes pizza, wine, slow jazz and WordPress! He's an SEO expert and a growth strategist. When he's not working on his businesses he enjoys sharing his learned lessons with the DBT community.
I prefer www, I didn’t use to give any importance to it and used the non-www version for my sites but these days I am using www on all sites. It gives a better look for sites in search engine result pages.
Wow I never knew Google views it as 2 different pages. I’ve followed the advice here and set up a 301 redirect. I think it looks better with ‘www’…
You are right in that you need to sort out www or non www but there is another reason to consider. Depending on how the server is configured you may find that non www doesnt actually work!!! I have seen a few famous sites that have made this mistake. I type in the domain name without the www and get an error message back. So which ever option you choose make sure it works correctly and is consistent across your site.
Thanks allot!
At first i thought that i had a problem with all the traffic going to the adress without the www but now im actually satisfied with it and ill keep it this way….:-)
I don’t get why people put in the ‘www’ OR the ‘http://’ in the first place! You can go to any website without it.
Whether you choose with www or without www, you have to make sure that only 1 is active and the other redirect to the active one’s.
I started my blog without www but later changed it to with www and seeing god results almost immediately.
Google’s likes www
i choose without www because people usually just type the domain name such as dailyblogtips.com in the browser.
This is Nice article. Very interesting post. I learn something from this articles. Good luck.
Thank you i newly learn something from this. Its very interesting information.
Use a blog it is no problem to use www or no.
Interesting! I didn’t know that! I learned something new again. Thanks.
thanks for the great tips. I always wondered why I was getting info to access about the same site in two different listings on my site statistics page. Now I know.
Oh ok thats good to know i may set that up now thanks..
Agreed. I’ve had major problems with this in the past. It’s very important to do one and stick with it, but make sure your .htaccess lets people enter both and still get to the same place. From a technical standpoint, the “no www” is better, but doesn’t really look as good.
I don’t use the www on most of my sites. Have .htaccess to do all the redirecting.
very helpful site! thanks
Excellent tip! Also consider if you own multiple domains to the same site (e.g. site.com and site.co.uk). You should apply the same principle i.e. choose one and do a 301 permanent redirect to it from any other domains.
Thanks for the tip – I was wondering about this myself… during hosting acct setup I was asked something about this and I think I chose – either – or just the http://thaipulse without the www. Hmmm. I gotta go back and fix this… THANKS!
Man!
It’s amazing how many big, big companies don’t even follow this simple advice. Thanks, Daniel!
wow.. i learned something.