undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Www vs non-www which is better?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Www vs non-www which is better?

Technical SEO
8
12
34.5k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • bronxpad
    bronxpad last edited by May 16, 2012, 8:50 PM

    Is it better to have all your pages point to the www version or non www version.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • ReviveMedia
      ReviveMedia @bronxpad last edited by Nov 24, 2015, 12:26 PM Nov 24, 2015, 12:26 PM

      I am needing help with this same thing. Did you ever find a solution to redirecting with yahoo web hosting? TIA

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,11 months
      • SeoMartin1
        SeoMartin1 last edited by Jan 8, 2015, 1:21 AM Jan 8, 2015, 1:21 AM

        Joel, i prefer www version cause i think from a technical perspective, there are several benefits to including the WWW.

        • Ability to restrict cookies when using multiple subdomains. Cookies of a main domain (i.e. example.com) are sent to all subdomains: If you are going to have subdomains for other purposes (blog for instance), you may want to differentiate the sites and have a www prefix for the regular site.
        • WWW actually MEANS something. As mentioned above, WWW is a hostname, and the hostname names the specific service being used a computer network; WWW names the web service for a domain.
        • Using the WWW hostname allows for easy segregation in the file structure of your website. Everything in the “www” folder (and at the www.example.com domain) is directly related to serving the site to the public. This allows for simple root-level site organization, eg you could also have a dev folder and have a subdomain dev.example.com for your development site, etc.
        • More flexibility with DNS. Your domain’s “Zone” file controls where traffic to your domain is directed and using the non-WWW version of your domain can complicate things.

        you may still want to use the WWW simply because it’s conventional to do so. On a business card, the WWW clearly conveys, This is our address on the World Wide Web. People are used to looking for, and seeing, the WWW and that’s sufficient reason for many to stick to the convention 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • topic:timeago_earlier,3 years
        • Seattle
          Seattle @bronxpad last edited by May 17, 2012, 3:22 PM May 17, 2012, 3:22 PM

          Personally, I'd dump yahoo hosting and have my stuff hosted elsewhere. For less than $40/mo you can get hosting and have access to edit the .htaccess file to your heart's content.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • bronxpad
            bronxpad @Seattle last edited by May 17, 2012, 2:51 PM May 17, 2012, 2:51 PM

            I spoke with Yahoo, apparently they only offer the 301 redirect for the higher cost hosting plans that run about $40. Any ideas?

            Seattle 1 Reply Last reply May 17, 2012, 3:22 PM Reply Quote 1
            • Seattle
              Seattle last edited by May 17, 2012, 2:36 PM May 17, 2012, 2:36 PM

              http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/manage/sitesettings/sitesettings-29.html

              bronxpad 1 Reply Last reply May 17, 2012, 2:51 PM Reply Quote 0
              • bronxpad
                bronxpad last edited by May 17, 2012, 9:25 AM May 17, 2012, 9:25 AM

                Ok, does anyone know how to do a proper 301 redirect in yahoo web hosting?

                ReviveMedia 1 Reply Last reply Nov 24, 2015, 12:26 PM Reply Quote 0
                • Metropolis
                  Metropolis last edited by May 17, 2012, 6:37 AM May 17, 2012, 6:37 AM

                  As long as your consistent, but it just comes down to which have the higest ranksing if on an existing site.

                  I tend to prefer non-www for new sites as its less typing and un-necessary.

                  There is a moment for non-www http://no-www.org/

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • MalcolmGibb
                    MalcolmGibb last edited by May 17, 2012, 5:19 AM May 17, 2012, 5:19 AM

                    There is no better method they do not affect rankings, it is purely personal preference. However you must implement proper redirect rules to resolve http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com or vice versa which ever one you choose.

                    I tend to always go for www. as it just looks better to me.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • wrttnwrd
                      wrttnwrd last edited by May 17, 2012, 1:01 AM May 17, 2012, 1:01 AM

                      I prefer www, because folks will generally tend to use that version when they link to you. It's reflex.

                      But you can check this. Run Open Site Explorer for both versions of your domain.

                      If more people link to you using 'www' than non-www, use www and 301 redirect the non-www to www.

                      If more people use non-www, do the reverse.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • kwoolf
                        kwoolf last edited by May 17, 2012, 12:31 AM May 17, 2012, 12:31 AM

                        If you do choose to keep the www, make sure you have redirects in place so when a user doesn't enter the www, he or she will get to your home page. Just FYI, www.domain.com is a subdomain of domain.com, so if your site can be access through both, search engines view these as two different pages and possibly split rankings.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • Seattle
                          Seattle last edited by May 16, 2012, 9:27 PM May 16, 2012, 9:27 PM

                          Neither one is better, but whichever one you choose, make sure you remain consistent for your entire site.

                          As for me, I use the www because that's what google uses.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • 1 / 1
                          1 out of 12
                          • First post
                            1/12
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          Browse Questions

                          Explore more categories

                          • Moz Tools

                            Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                          • SEO Tactics

                            Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                          • Community

                            Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                          • Digital Marketing

                            Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                          • Research & Trends

                            Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                          • Support

                            Connect on product support and feature requests.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • I.AM.Strategist

                            Best Practice for www and non www

                            How is the best way to handle all the different variations of a website in terms of www | non www | http | https? In Google Search Console, I have all 4 versions and I have selected a preference. In Open Site Explorer I can see that the www and non www versions are treated differently with one group of links pointing to each version of the same page. This gives a different PA score. eg. http://mydomain.com DA 25 PA 35 http://www.mydomain.com DA 19 PA 21 Each version of the home page having it's only set of links and scores. Should I try and "consolidate" all the scores into one page? Should I set up redirects to my preferred version of the website? Thanks in advance

                            Technical SEO | Jun 26, 2019, 6:16 PM | I.AM.Strategist
                            0
                          • Marketing_Today

                            DNS vs IIS redirection

                            I'm working on a project where a site has gone through a rebrand and is therefore also moving to a new domain name. Some pages have been merged on the new site so it's not a lift and shift job and so I'm writing up a redirect plan. Their IT dept have asked if we want redirects done by DNS redirect or IIS redirect. Which one will allow us to have redirects on a page level and not a domain level? I think IIS may be the right route but would love your thoughts on this please.

                            Technical SEO | Feb 10, 2015, 4:30 PM | Marketing_Today
                            1
                          • Nanook1

                            Is it better to use XXX.com or XXX.com/index.html as canonical page

                            Is it better to use 301 redirects or canonical page? I suspect canonical is easier. The question is, which is the best canonical page, YYY.com or YYY.com/indexhtml? I assume YYY.com, since there will be many other pages such as YYY.com/info.html, YYY.com/services.html, etc.

                            Technical SEO | Jan 2, 2015, 7:27 PM | Nanook1
                            0
                          • socialengaged

                            Meta Description VS Rich Snippets

                            Hello everyone, I have one question: there is a way to tell Google to take the meta description for the search results instead of the rich snippets? I already read some posts here in moz, but no answer was found. In the post was said that if you have keywords in the meta google may take this information instead, but it's not like this as i have keywords in the meta tags. The fact is that, in this way, the descriptions are not compelling at all, as they were intended to be. If it's not worth for ranking, so why google does not allow at least to have it's own website descriptions in their search results? I undestand that spam issues may be an answer, but in this way it penalizes also not spammy websites that may convert more if with a much more compelling description than the snippets. What do you think? and there is any way to fix this problem? Thanks!
                            Eugenio

                            Technical SEO | Aug 30, 2013, 10:41 PM | socialengaged
                            0
                          • JohannCR

                            Internal search : rel=canonical vs noindex vs robots.txt

                            Hi everyone, I have a website with a lot of internal search results pages indexed. I'm not asking if they should be indexed or not, I  know they should not according to Google's guidelines. And they make a bunch of duplicated pages so I want to solve this problem. The thing is, if I noindex them, the site is gonna lose a non-negligible chunk of traffic : nearly 13% according to google analytics !!! I thought of blocking them in robots.txt. This solution would not keep them out of the index. But the pages appearing in GG SERPS would then look empty (no title, no description), thus their CTR would plummet and I would lose a bit of traffic too... The last idea I had was to use a rel=canonical tag pointing to the original search page (that is empty, without results), but it would probably have the same effect as noindexing them, wouldn't it ? (never tried so I'm not sure of this) Of course I did some research on the subject, but each of my finding recommanded one of the 3 methods only ! One even recommanded noindex+robots.txt block which is stupid because the noindex would then be useless... Is there somebody who can tell me which option is the best to keep this traffic ? Thanks a million

                            Technical SEO | Apr 13, 2012, 7:13 PM | JohannCR
                            0
                          • LarsEriksson

                            Hreflang on non-canonical pages

                            Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
                            3 same product but RED
                            4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x"  _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars

                            Technical SEO | Apr 5, 2012, 5:01 PM | LarsEriksson
                            0
                          • ChristianMKTG

                            Drupal URL Aliases vs 301 Redirects + Do URL Aliases create duplicates?

                            Hi all! I have just begun work on a Drupal site which heavily uses the URL Aliases feature. I fear that it is creating duplicate links. For example:: we have http://www.URL.com/index.php and http://www.URL.com/ In addition we are about to switch a lot of links and want to keep the search engine benefit. Am I right in thinking URL aliases change the URL, while leaving the old URL live and without creating search engine friendly redirects such as 301s? Thanks for any help! Christian

                            Technical SEO | Nov 11, 2011, 5:29 AM | ChristianMKTG
                            0
                          • raywatson

                            Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical

                            For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)

                            Technical SEO | May 6, 2011, 3:55 PM | raywatson
                            0

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter
                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.