Www vs non-www which is better?

[bronxpad]

Is it better to have all your pages point to the www version or non www version.

[ReviveMedia]

I am needing help with this same thing. Did you ever find a solution to redirecting with yahoo web hosting? TIA

[SeoMartin1]

Joel, i prefer www version cause i think from a technical perspective, there are several benefits to including the WWW.

• Ability to restrict cookies when using multiple subdomains. Cookies of a main domain (i.e. example.com) are sent to all subdomains: If you are going to have subdomains for other purposes (blog for instance), you may want to differentiate the sites and have a www prefix for the regular site.
• WWW actually MEANS something. As mentioned above, WWW is a hostname, and the hostname names the specific service being used a computer network; WWW names the web service for a domain.
• Using the WWW hostname allows for easy segregation in the file structure of your website. Everything in the “www” folder (and at the www.example.com domain) is directly related to serving the site to the public. This allows for simple root-level site organization, eg you could also have a dev folder and have a subdomain dev.example.com for your development site, etc.
• More flexibility with DNS. Your domain’s “Zone” file controls where traffic to your domain is directed and using the non-WWW version of your domain can complicate things.

you may still want to use the WWW simply because it’s conventional to do so. On a business card, the WWW clearly conveys, This is our address on the World Wide Web. People are used to looking for, and seeing, the WWW and that’s sufficient reason for many to stick to the convention

[Seattle]

Personally, I'd dump yahoo hosting and have my stuff hosted elsewhere. For less than $40/mo you can get hosting and have access to edit the .htaccess file to your heart's content.

[bronxpad]

I spoke with Yahoo, apparently they only offer the 301 redirect for the higher cost hosting plans that run about $40. Any ideas?

[Seattle]

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/manage/sitesettings/sitesettings-29.html

[bronxpad]

Ok, does anyone know how to do a proper 301 redirect in yahoo web hosting?

[Metropolis]

As long as your consistent, but it just comes down to which have the higest ranksing if on an existing site.

I tend to prefer non-www for new sites as its less typing and un-necessary.

There is a moment for non-www http://no-www.org/

[MalcolmGibb]

There is no better method they do not affect rankings, it is purely personal preference. However you must implement proper redirect rules to resolve http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com or vice versa which ever one you choose.

I tend to always go for www. as it just looks better to me.

[wrttnwrd]

I prefer www, because folks will generally tend to use that version when they link to you. It's reflex.

But you can check this. Run Open Site Explorer for both versions of your domain.

If more people link to you using 'www' than non-www, use www and 301 redirect the non-www to www.

If more people use non-www, do the reverse.

[kwoolf]

If you do choose to keep the www, make sure you have redirects in place so when a user doesn't enter the www, he or she will get to your home page. Just FYI, www.domain.com is a subdomain of domain.com, so if your site can be access through both, search engines view these as two different pages and possibly split rankings.

[Seattle]

Neither one is better, but whichever one you choose, make sure you remain consistent for your entire site.

As for me, I use the www because that's what google uses.