SEO Differences – www vs non www

Last modified: January 13, 2020

Cloudways

Many years ago, all websites would begin with a WWW prefix, these days you will see it every once in a while but there are many sites that do not use the WWW prefix anymore. Since there are 2 options, we get asked about this every once in a while. Most people want to know if there is any difference in terms of SEO when choosing www vs non www or vice versa. The short answer is that there is literally no difference using www vs non www or the other way around. Here is a write up from Google to corroborate that fact.

A whole lot of hosting companies these days remove the www right off the bat. So when you first add your website to the server it will be without the www.

Don’t Change www vs non www on a Live Site

If you have a live site and are thinking of changing to www vs non www for SEO purposes – don’t. There is no SEO reason to do so, especially not on a live site. Quite the opposite actually. Changing the www structure on a site that Google already indexed will have the opposite affect you are looking for.

Choose www vs non www on a New Site

When creating a new WordPress site you are asked for your domain URL, when adding the URL you can simply decide whether to add the www or not. Based on that, the site’s links with change appropriately.

To see your WordPress site’s URL just go to settings -> General

General Settings

Tell Google What Version to Index

It’s important you let Google know what version you want it to index, www vs non www. In order to do that, go to Google Search Console, Click on the top right icon and click on  “site settings”.

site version

Then all you have to do is choose your preferred version:

www vs non www

That’s basically it. Now Google knows how to index your site depending on your preferences.

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Final Thoughts

There is really no difference between www vs non www so if you have a live and indexed site, don’t change it.

If you have a new site not indexed yet. make a choice and stick to it.

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