Is it better to use a root domain name (without www) for the website, or www prefix?

Compared to traditional websites, many website domain names are now popular without domain names such as www. For example, the most popular social networking sites in the world, Twitter, the domain name is twitter.com. So is it better to have www, or a root domain(with out www)?

I）ABOUT THE ROOT DOMAIN NAME (NAKED DOMAIN) AND WWW

First of all, we have to understand the structure of a domain name. Take the domain name of this site to explain henrywithu.com, henrywithu is the name, .com is the suffix, henrywithu.com is the root domain name (or top-level domain name, first-level domain name) of this domain name. After I registered the henrywithu.com domain name, all subdomains including xxx(arbitrary).henrywithu.com such as www.henrywithu.com are mine. I can register with the relevant domain registrar or at NS (nameserver). One of the important subdomains is a www subdomain.

II）WHY USE WWW

The origin of the Internet is complicated. At the beginning, many protocols were included, and many of them were about the design of the Internet in the first place. The full name of www is World Wide Web. It means the type of Web represented in various Internet. It originated in 1993 and was invented by British Timothy John Berners-Lee. It can be simply understood as a type of website. Of course the domain name serves as a waypoint for finding addresses in the Internet. It is precisely because of the rise of the World Wide Web that the development and vitality of domain names has been driven. It can be said that www has created domain names. As long as you see the domain name that starts with www, you know that this is a website. Of course, this is not mandatory, but it is traditionally done. For example, Google and other websites have followed the traditional practice and adopted www.

What needs to be emphasized here is that with www and without www, they are two URLs under the same domain name, which are independent. This means that henrywithu.com and www.henrywithu.com can be set up as two different websites, for consistency of user experience. Most websites choose to use one of them as the main site and the other as the jump. For example, this site uses www.henrywithu.com as the main site, henrywithu.com as the jump, and jumps to www.henrywithu.com.

For large websites with more than one website, the best way is to use www as the main website. For example, google.com, the main site search www.google.com, and news.google.com, map.google.com and so on.

III）BENEFITS OF NOT USING WWW

Understand the origin of www, and roughly understand what is going on, then in fact, you can completely avoid the domain name of www. Many people think that the shorter the domain name, the better, and simply use the root domain name as the website address. The most obvious benefit of this is that it reduces the amount of user input, making it shorter and relatively easier to type. And it is also a distinguishing benefit for the various emerging domain names with new suffixes. For example, we often know the traditional suffixes of .com .net .org, but there are various suffixes in the world, such as .omg.

When you register an omg domain name, such as ifeelcool.omg, then if you use the www domain name, it is www.ifeelcool.omg. In this way, many people find it unsightly and unaccustomed to visual and input. In accordance with international practice (this is not necessary), many people directly use the top-level domain name ifeelcool.omg as the website URL, which is good-looking, easy to remember, and easy to enter.

At present, most of the good name domain names with traditional suffixes have been registered, so if you want this name, you can register for other suffixes, as well as a lot of good names and good combinations.

IV）WHAT ARE THE DISADVANTAGES OF USING A ROOT DOMAIN NAME WITHOUT WWW DIRECTLY?

(1) Website scope zoom. For example, one site is test.henrywithu.com, and henrywithu.com is a different site on a different system. Using the root domain name directly, the cookie of henrywithu.com will affect the test.henrywithu.com domain name, which will have a certain impact on security, privacy, and management.

(2) Regular matches for URLs. If prefixed with www and ending with .com .net .org, the chances of success are usually much greater. If the URL does not start with www and does not end with the three top-level domain names, the probability of a successful match is much smaller. Whether it matters or not depends on your use.

(3) MX and CNAME records will conflict and will not be allowed to coexist. (This is also the most important reason why this site does not use root domain names.)

Of course, if you don’t need so many requirements, the above reasons are optional.

V）SUMMARY

The first thing to clarify is that not using www does not have a big impact on website SEO. However, it is generally believed that the root domain name has a higher weight than the second-level domain name, which is also a point that many webmasters who directly use the root domain name value. After my actual experience, the two (www, compared with the root domain name) have no effect.

Short domain name and new suffix are for personal station, more casual, suitable for naked domain names. This will look more lively and energetic.

If it is more formal, solemn, or because of having to use www for some of the reasons above, then there is no harm.

Please note that no matter which method is adopted, please keep it. Because if the URL structure is often changed, it will have a greater impact on the website’s SEO. After changing the URL, be sure to make a 301 redirect to the URL.

Example 1 – Redirect example.com to www.example.com:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Example 2 – Redirect www.example.com to example.com:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/example\.com\/" [R=301,L]

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