Should I use www in my url?

[jtmartin]

I have a blog that is my name .net and is a PR 2. I always use the domain name without the www in front. When I type my name into Google, my blog is listed number 1 but it is with the www and the page rank is 0.

Should I be using the www or does it matter?

[DaveJ|UK]

Yes, use www!

Your web site is on the World Wide Web, is it not?

The presence of www in your URL informs both users and machines that they can find a web site there. Without the www. prefix it could be anything.

Although it would do the job, you wouldn't just write a house number and postcode on an enveloper. A a bare minimum you write the first line of the address plus the postcode, and most people would write the full address.

If you're already indexed without the www. that's not a problem. Just do a simple 301 permanent redirect from the old address to the new.

[Matty_SD]

So for my site, you can get there with and without the www. For something like this, should i be submitting the site with the www to search engines?

[DaveJ|UK]

You haven't needed to submit to search engines for the last decade. If you have even a single inbound link from a page that's already indexed then the spiders will find you.

All of your internal links should use a path relative to the wwwroot. So in your main nav menu you'd have links to /news.html, /abou.html, etc. To link to the home page, simply point your anchor tag at "/".

Then use a simple server script (PHP, ASP.NET, etc.) to add the www. to the URL. i.e. check for URL's such as http://example.com/ and HTTP 301 redirect to http://www.example.com/

This will ensure that all of your URL's remain consistent, even if external pages which you have no control over link to you without the www and prevents possible duplicate content issues.

You shoulso configure Google Webmaster Tools to use the www. in URL's for each of your sites.

[onlineshine]

Usually people would suffer with this Issue of with www and without www. This Issue in seo terms would be called as Canonicalization.

Basically, every website would have this Issue but some would have a little more. If you check the back links in Google or yahoo or any other search engines, you would view different number of links for with WWW and without WWW. If there is a difference in back links, it means a website has a canonicalization Issue. Due to this, Search Engine Spiders/bots would recognize your single website as two different websites (with www and without www) and the link building performed on your website would be shared for those two websites. Therefore, although your website has good backlinks and good SERP, your PR would remain Low and same.

If you would like to resolve this Issue, you've to stick to anyone of the URL i.e. with www or without www in your website promotion and place a 301 redirect to the other neglected URL.

Please note that, you've to utilize only one URL (with www or without www) in your promotion and has to be continued for rest of the promotion.

[seowebsite]

Originally Posted by DaveJ|UK

Yes, use www!

Your web site is on the World Wide Web, is it not?

The presence of www in your URL informs both users and machines that they can find a web site there. Without the www. prefix it could be anything.

Although it would do the job, you wouldn't just write a house number and postcode on an enveloper. A a bare minimum you write the first line of the address plus the postcode, and most people would write the full address.

If you're already indexed without the www. that's not a problem. Just do a simple 301 permanent redirect from the old address to the new.

Yeah absolutely right Mr DeveJ I agre with you keep going

[lenesyn]

Yes, use the www. Most of the sites are using it..