With www. or without?

[Bzicky]

If a site both accessible using addresses www.site.com and simply site.com, what address is better to promote?

I found that in Google queries link:www.site.com and link:site.com return different results. I always saw that the query with 'www' returns much more results.

Does it mean that it is better to promote address with 'www'?

[chris_f]

Does it mean that it is better to promote address with 'www'?

No, I just means it's used more.

I prefer the non www. but that's just a personal preferance because I use sub domain alot. There is no real advantage of promoting either of them. However, I'd promote the www. purely because new internet users expect it and some software/web apps expect it.

Chris.

[bill]

There was a good thread about this called Google now treats Domain.com and www.Domain.com as Different Sites? [webmasterworld.com]. There was another thread that I participated in that referenced a site that recommended the best type of scenario was one in which you focus on the non-www approach and have your server set up to redirect visitors to the non-www address even if they entered the URL with www. Of course I can no longer find this thread or my link...;)

[caine]

As both Chris and Bill,

have stated, there is no real difference. It justs depends on what you are planning to do with the URI, if its just one site, then no problems, but if your talking on a larger scale, then using the non-www, and substituting it with subdomains to section of a site, due to them being completely seperate areas of the site or of the business, depending on the context of course.

If your thinking along the lines of using sub-domains then these are independently viewed by most of the search engines, whatever you do i would not suggest multiple subdomins with similar content, big no no.

Taking it one step further if your thinking about langauge variations then i would suggest using different urls.

[Bzicky]

Thank you chris_f, bill, and caine!

Did I understand correctly:
If I need to promote site domain.com,
it is useful for Google to setup redirect from [domain.com...] to [domain.com...] using the redirect code in .htaccess file provided in that older thread?

[jdMorgan]

Bzicky,

If I need to promote site domain.com, it is useful for Google to setup redirect from [domain.com...] to [domain.com...] using the redirect code in .htaccess file provided in that older thread?

Yes. Use a 301-Moved Permanently redirect.

Jim

[sun818]

I prefer non-www. Saves four bytes! :) Here is what is in my .htaccess file:

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

[jdMorgan]

You'll need a space in there after {HTTP_HOST}

And here's an equivalent way to do it:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.mydomain\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [mydomain.com...] [R=permanent,L]

Jim

[Bzicky]

Thanks a lot jdMorgan and sun818!

I added these lines to my .htaccess file and now redirect works.
I noted also that line "Options +FollowSymlinks" is essential on my server.