Which canonical name is better? www or non-www?

Question

I got confused which domain to go with.

domain

or www.domain

I do not need redirects between each other. I would like to know which one is better anyway.

Update: The Greg links below contain very useful information. Must visit.

Answer 1

This is not important for SEO. Most importantly, you will always be redirected to the same instance, so crawler robots will not mistake www.a.com/index.html and a.com/index.html as double content, even if modern bots they can find it is the same site and the same page. Without www. it’s easier for the user to write in the address bar and easier to remember. I would go to a.com instead of www.a.com. After you add both to your server, do the correct redirection using the IIS settings or the .htaccess file on Apache. Then add the website to Google Webmaster and other common web analysis systems, while it is important to set the default domain there. Install it without www.

Good luck.

Answer 2

To some extent, the answer to this question depends on your audience. More technical websites like to drop www, like jQuery.com and (of course) stackoverflow.com

If your website is intended for the average home user, he usually expects www to be at the beginning of the web address, and you can cause confusion and possibly even give up trust if you do not enable it.

Most importantly, your site works with or without (it’s advisable to redirect to your preferred option, as people can share a link to the page you are on, and search engines need to know the true "source" of the page), but think about to your audience when you decide what to use.

Answer 3

IMO, not WWW is better for blogs / personal sites, etc. .... and WWW is good for websites of companies, organizations, etc.