www vs non-www
Whether your URL starts with www or not — does it matter for SEO, visitors, or your website? This guide explains the difference and what to choose.
You might have noticed that some websites start with www (like www.yourbusiness.com) and some don't (like yourbusiness.com). You might wonder: does it matter which one you use? And why do both work on most sites?
Quick summary
The www prefix makes no practical difference to visitors or SEO. What matters is that your site uses one version consistently and redirects the other to it. Most modern sites pick the non-www version (yourbusiness.com) as their canonical address, but www works equally well.
What does www actually mean?
www stands for "World Wide Web." In the early days of the internet, it was used to distinguish web servers from other servers on the same domain (like ftp.yourbusiness.com for file transfers or mail.yourbusiness.com for email). Today, almost everything uses the web, so www is largely a historical convention.
Technically, www is a subdomain of your domain. That means www.yourbusiness.com is a subdomain, and yourbusiness.com (without the prefix) is called the "bare domain," "root domain," or "apex domain."
Does it affect SEO?
No — not in any meaningful way. Google treats www.yourbusiness.com and yourbusiness.com equally for ranking purposes.
What does matter for SEO is consistency. If some pages are indexed as www.yourbusiness.com and others as yourbusiness.com, that creates what's called duplicate content — multiple URLs for the same page. This can dilute your SEO signals.
The fix is simple: pick one version and redirect the other to it permanently (using a 301 redirect). This is called your canonical domain.
Which should you choose?
Either works well. The trend for new sites is toward non-www (bare domain) because it's shorter and cleaner. But if you already have an established site using www, there's no reason to change.
Using non-www (yourbusiness.com)
- Shorter, cleaner URL
- Common for modern sites
- Works fine in all situations
Using www (www.yourbusiness.com)
- Traditional, widely recognized
- Can offer technical advantages at scale (cookie handling on subdomains)
- Also works fine for all businesses
Setting up redirects
Whichever version you choose as your canonical domain, make sure the other version redirects to it. For example:
- If your canonical is
yourbusiness.com, set up a redirect sowww.yourbusiness.com→yourbusiness.com - If your canonical is
www.yourbusiness.com, set up a redirect soyourbusiness.com→www.yourbusiness.com
This redirect is usually handled in your hosting control panel or by your web server configuration — we take care of this when building or migrating your site.
How DNS handles www
In DNS, www is usually configured as a CNAME record pointing to the root domain:
| Name | Type | Value |
|---|---|---|
www | CNAME | yourbusiness.com |
This means both addresses resolve to the same place. The redirect then determines which version is the "official" one.
Common questions
Related guides
- Subdomains explained
- DNS records explained (A, CNAME, MX, TXT)
- Pointing your domain to a new site
- What is SSL & HTTPS?
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