Www. or naked url?
-
Hi everyone, I am about to start a new WordPress site and debating whether to use www or naked URL for the URL structure. Using naked URL makes sense from a branding and minimalistic perspective but I am reading that using naked URL might have some technical deficiencies. Specifically, cookie issues and DNS can't be cname.
Are these technical deficiencies still valid when using naked url?
Would appreciate any feedback on this!
Cheers
-
I would definitely make sure you have canonical URLs set up so both www and naked URLs are not considered duplicate content.
-
Hi Gaston, thanks for the response. Yes, I agree that there are no differences from an SEO perspective but my question was, are there any limitations when using naked url when it comes to cookies and creating new cnames. Basically, does www. scale better in the future or have these deficiencies been resolved when it comes to naked urls.
Cheers.
-
Hi,
There is no technical SEO difference between using www or naked URL.
Use one or another thinking about user experience and/or brading.Best luck.
GR.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Nofollow "print" URLs?
Hi there, Apols for the basic question but is it considered good practice to nofollow one of one's own URLs? Basically our 'print page' command produces an identical URL in the same window but with .../?print=1 at the end. As far as I've been reading, the nofollow html attribute is, broadly speaking, only for links to external websites you don't want to vouch for or internal links to login/register pages that together with noindex, you're asking Google not to waste crawl budget on. (The print page is already noindexed so we're good there) Can anyone confirm the above from their own experience? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daft.ie0 -
URL Rewriting Best Practices
Hey Moz! I’m getting ready to implement URL rewrites on my website to improve site structure/URL readability. More specifically I want to: Improve our website structure by removing redundant directories. Replace underscores with dashes and remove file extensions for our URLs. Please see my example below: Old structure: http://www.widgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm New structure: https://www.widgets.com/commercial-widgets/small-blue-widget I've read several URL rewriting guides online, all of which seem to provide similar but overall different methods to do this. I'm looking for what's considered best practices to implement these rewrites. From what I understand, the most common method is to implement rewrites in our .htaccess file using mod_rewrite (which will find the old URLs and rewrite them according to the rewrites I implement). One question I can't seem to find a definitive answer to is when I implement the rewrite to remove file extensions/replace underscores with dashes in our URLs, do the webpage file names need to be edited to the new format? From what I understand the webpage file names must remain the same for the rewrites in the .htaccess to work. However, our internal links (including canonical links) must be changed to the new URL format. Can anyone shed light on this? Also, I'm aware that implementing URL rewriting improperly could negatively affect our SERP rankings. If I redirect our old website directory structure to our new structure using this rewrite, are my bases covered in regards to having the proper 301 redirects in place to not affect our rankings negatively? Please offer any advice/reliable guides to handle this properly. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?
A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
I've submitted a disavow file in my www version account, should I submit one in my non-www version account as well?
My non-www version account is my preferred domain. Should I submit in both account? Or one account will take care of the disavow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChelseaP0 -
Links to www vs non-www
I was having speed issues when I ran a test under Google Page Speed test and, as a result, switched to using Google Page Speed Service. This meant I had to switch my site from the non-www to the www. Since the switch my page is running faster but my ranking has dropped. What I'm trying to find out is the drop due to all of my previous links going to the non-www or is it because of the site being considered new and is more of a temporary issue. If it is a link issue I will contact everyone I can to see who will update the site address. Thanks everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | toddmatthewca0 -
If parent domain is www, does it matter if subdomain on a different server is non-www?
If you have a main website (www.example.com) with a subdomain of the website (service.example.com) that lives on a separate server with a separate IP address, is there an SEO benefit/advantage to have having the www included in the url since the parent url includes the www? Assume: 1. Applicable 301 redirects are in place on both sites 2. No duplicate content issues Additionally, would your answer be different if the site is a .gov or .edu site vs. a .com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOteamfl0 -
Using abbreviations in URL - Matching Keyword
We have a website that uses /us/, /ca/, /va/, etc for URLs of the different U.S. states. How much better is it (or is it at all better) to use /california/ or /virginia/ instead in our URLs to rank for searches that include the name of those states?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Heydarian0 -
301 Redirect All Url's - WWW -> HTTP
Hi guys, This is part 2 of a question I asked before which got partially answered; I clicked question answered before I realized it only fixed part of the problem so I think I have to post a new question now. I have an apache server I believe on Host Gator. What I want to do is redirect every URL to it's corresponding alternative (www redirects to http). So for example if someone typed in www.mysite.com/page1 it would take them to http://mysite.com/page1 Here is a code that has made all of my site's links go from WWW to HTTP which is great, but the problem is still if you try to access the WWW version by typing it, it still works and I need it to redirect. It's important because Google has been indexing SOME of the URL's as http and some as WWW and my site was just HTTP for a long time until I made the mistake of switching it now I'm having a problem with duplicate content and such. Updated it in Webmaster Tools but I need to do this regardless for other SE's. Thanks a ton! RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DustinX0