advised not to include www. in the url

[Steven1976a]

Hi
I was advised by someone not to include the www. in our domain name so instead of appearing like below

http://www.mywebsite.com

it would appear in the browser

http://mywebsite.com

Can anyone advise whether this would have any negative, positive effect on rankings and if indeed there is any difference or benefit in displaying without the www. ????

[Toni Anicic]

There is no difference, just make shure you use ONE of these and not both (use www. or don't use it at all, it's as simple as that).

In modern web 2.0 time it's considered "cooler" not to use www.

[nagarro]

I am agree with tony, either use www or simple url without www

[Jasoncreja]

it doesn't make any difference buddy if you type full url in browser or you will avoid www and run in browser then you will get same result.:p

[weegillis]

Either will work but it may be confusing to go through your logs if there is any inconsistency, what with all the different urls that lead to the same resource.

I would recommend using www and set a directive on your server to redirect all non-www requests to the www url.

Some browsers will direct you to a search page if you don't include www in the location bar when typing in the address (without http://). Easier if people can expect what they're used to expecting.

[Jeremy80]

I agree with the comments above. It doesn't matter which you use, but choose one version and stick with it.

As weegillis suggested, I also think you should automatically redirect visitors to the version you prefer. This will ensure that all of your homepage backlinks get credited to one url. I take this one step further and redirect them if they don't include the trailing slash or if they include index<dot>html in the url.

You can also set your preferred domain in your Google Webmaster Tools account.

[watto]

Sure typing either url in the browser will direct you to the same page, but for SEO purposes make sure you choose one or the other, or google may penalise you for duplicate content.

Watto

[tushar123]

There is not much difference in using WWW or not. One thing you need to focus in mind is that, you should choose only one option, and then stick to it for SEO.