Removing WWW from url

Google Optimisation

[squared]

This might be construed as being a little overboard, but I was wondering if anyone has any advice on whether removing the www from a url improves results for keyworded domains.

For instance would widgets-world.com be a better url than www.widgets-world.com. And if someone were to link to you with just the url (like: http://www.widgets-world.com), would the first be better? Or would the second be better since the period is considered a stop letter and would separate the widgets from the //.

I've also noticed DMOZ removes their WWW. Is there a reason for this - other than shorter urls?

[netjunkie]

I don't know about that end, I always use them as I've heard from some sources it is needed to connect from certain locals. I do know that in some engines it will get you listed twice (with and without).

[Brian]

Does anybody know if it makes any difference that, for instance, people commonly link to me as www.mydomain while my urls are all http://mydomain? I've sometimes wondered if this is the reason why my refreshed index page often drops off the index and only appears when I hit the search button a second time.

[Marcia]

It's best to be consistent, use it all with or all without the www. It avoids confusion that way. With some hosts, it has to be with. If I type in my domains on a host I use without, I'll end up with the www in there. Others may be different, but I've always used it with for consistency.

[EliteWeb]

www is used as an identifier its a world wide web page :P I use www on all of my domains unless they are sub-domains which then i dont to keep em short :P (unless a publication adds a www. in their article, which they commonly tend to then i setup the www for the subdomain also)

Goal in mind is to keep consistant. :P

[FoodPlaces]

On a techincal side note:

It is usually the browser or whatever search engine it uses that will append the www. to a web URL if the site is actually located at www.mydomain.com and the web viewer types mydomain.com - some browsers (older, ones that dont handle "weird" domain lookups like mydomain.info, etc) will not add the www. to it and the user may get a "Not found" or "No DNS entry" or something similar if two other factors are not taken into account.

Those factors... if you do choose to use mydomain.com as a valid web address, then you must remember the following:

(1) Create a DNS entry for mydomain.com and point it to the web server

(2) Make sure that the mapping rules for the web server will handle it without a subdomain. (My server is very literal for domain names unless you specify otherwise, and mydomain.com will fail unless it is in my config file... also *.mydomain.com will not work either on my server since there is no . before [mydomain.com)...]

Just some things on the technical end to note so you prevent problems. At least a few (if not many) search engines are quite literal in looking for start URLs.

- Rob

[jomaxx]

I can't imagine any browser or search engine adding a "www." to a URL for no reason. It's the server configuration that does this.

[sun818]

In Internet Explorer, type "widget" (the middle part of the domain name) in the address bar. It will become www.widget.com if you press Ctrl-Enter. I think one benefit of removing the www from the URL is cumulative bandwidth savings.

[FoodPlaces]

jomaxx:

You are unfortunately wrong. I run 6 web servers, and have done so for almost a decade. There are only 2 domains I have configured for domain.com the rest require www.domain.com or sub.domain.com - and if I type in domain.com in Mozilla, Netscape 6+ and numerous versions of IE, the browser will try www. (assuming that you dont have domain.com configured in BOTH DNS and web server) - if you use Netscape v4 or before, some other versions of IE, or any http retrieval software (Curl, etc), you get the following...

"could not resolve host: domain.com"

or

"404: Not found"

(depending on which the case is)

NOW... if you have domain.com in your DNS, then it is entirely up to the web server to determine what to do with it.

I run multi-homed servers (and only 3 actually serve, btw.... the rest are backups that never get used). 1 is adult (10 domains), 1 is newsgroups via web (4 domains), 1 is about 40 other domains.

Because I run multihomed servers, I *have* to tell it how to handle each request.

If you run one site, you can pass all requests to a certain
directory - on my server it would look like

Pass /* l:\www\http\*

BUT... since I run multiple domains to the same server, I
have to do this

Pass /* l:\www\http_domain_com\* www.domain.com
Pass /* l:\www\http_domain_com\* domain.com

Pass /* l:\www\http_domain2_com\* www.domain2.com
Pass /* l:\www\http_domain2_com\* domain2.com

and then I can have a generic pass rule for anything else.
Not very good idea since with 40 domains, an incomplete URL will probably not retrieve the proper document...

But, that is the way it works.

IE does an MSN search - which boosts their search statistics - but then brings you to www. with no intervention from the web server. (there was stuff online about this even, not too long ago when the other big search players were complaining about MS padding their search statistics in this fashion).

Whether it is lacking DNS entry, or the browser responding to a 404 on a url with no sub-domain is a case by case thing. MS has changed the way IE handles it a dozen times. Mozilla (current releases) will try www. as the second request on a failed pull.

Oh, and I've just re-tried all of this to verify. I can send you the specifics, including site URLs, software versions I have tried and all if you want... just sticky me.

- Robert

[edited by: FoodPlaces at 8:58 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2002]

[glengara]

I'm a bit leery of sites that don't have the www, I always wonder why.

[Brian]

glen: I don't have www (although my inbounds commonly do, and I can't really get onto Yahoo about that, or they'd think I was nutz). Main reason: try speaking your web address aloud. Less is more.

[glengara]

*try speaking your web address aloud.*
True, but would you not naturally put the www in front when you got home/office/wherever?

[jomaxx]

I've tried dozens of dot-com domains, and I have yet to find a domain to test your assertion with. Either the non-www address is valid, or there's a server rewrite to the www version, or neither is valid.

I did find find the following non-com domains that are only valid with a www prefix. Both were tested with current browser versions:
images.org - Explorer does not try to contact the www version, but Netscape does
mcmillan.co.uk - neither browser tries the www version

I'm out of time and have to go out. But if you can point me to a dot-com domain that demonstrates your point, I'd be happy to take a look at it.

[kfander]

Interesting. I thought I was the only one in the world who didn't know what that was all about.

My sites can all be accessed with or without the www on every browser I've tested them on.

I have always left it off when submitting or listing my sites anywhere, more for the sake of brevity than anything else, but since I got yelled at for doing that in Zeal, I've started adding it everywhere.

I don't think it makes any difference if it's on or off, as far as the ODP is concerned. I've read that when your backlinks are divided among those with the www and those without, your PR is split, but I haven't seen evidence of that in any of my sites.

[glengara]

Actually, Kfander's point about split incomings being counted seperately is what I'd be concerned about.
Another myth?

[ALurkingFriend]

I think the only thing that mattters is that mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com should be the same or redirect from one to the other. Having differnet pages at mydomain.com/widgets.html and www.mydomain.com/widgets.html would probably confuse users, even if the SE's keep them straight.

[jomaxx]

Just to follow up on my previous post, I finally found a dot-com example of the situation I was talking about (and I hope FoodPlaces was talking about as well):
albertina.com does not resolve, but www.albertina.com does.

When I put "albertina.com" in the URL field, Netscape did surprise me by trying the www version after the non-www version failed. This is my understanding of what FoodPlaces was saying. But in Explorer I simply get an MSN search page prefixed by 'We can't find "albertina.com".' At no point does it attempt to fix the URL by inserting a "www."

I can't guarantee this will happen with every version of MSIE on ever platform, but anyway that is the behaviour I was trying to describe. I won't comment on all that server config information he included, because I don't see how it bears on anything I said.

[FoodPlaces]

Hi jomaxx,

That is exactly what I am talking about... and oddly versions of IE all seem to handle it differently. I've had v5 and v5.5 both (on different machines for each version) act differently in those cases. There doesnt seem to be much pattern.

MS has so many sub versions it's not funny, and OEM and non-OEM and Win98 and Win98SE alone came with over a half dozen variants.

It's a nightmare I tell ya! I just do a redirect as others suggested - but that means DNS entries.

Oh - as for the server config stuff, you can have widgets.com set in your http server to redirect to www.widgets.com - and then you make sure you have a DNS entry in your DNS servers (or whoever hosts them for you) for widgets.com that points to the same IP address as www.widgets.com

My server tips were so that on those versions of IE and Netscape that dont look for www.domain.com when someone leaves it out, it'll automatically be handled (because domain.com wont fail the DNS lookup or 404 on the web server at all - and the search engines will have the proper page without diluting it's value from thinking it's a different site/domain with the same exact content).

- Rob