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Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:11 pm
by volomike
Typically I have been setting up my Apache2 .htaccess file so that if you connect to my domain with "
www.", I redirect you back with a 301 permanent redirect to the domain without the "
www.".
Okay, but now my client, who's new at SEO, wants me to do the inverse of this -- if they connect without "
www.", then redirect back as "
www.". So, I wanted to ask you -- is there some new revelation in SEO regarding page rank that you get a higher page rank now if you use the "
www."?
To me, if I were Google and so energy-conscious, I would be setting the page rank algorithm to promote the non-www type domains over the others. Not only is it a more modern thing to drop the "
www.", but that's 8 unicode character bytes that the servers don't have to process. On a global scale -- energy-wise -- that saves power consumption, right? And this is especially important if a site uses absolute URLs instead relative URLs (something you see now that the handsome-URL craze has taken root) -- because those "
www." are spread throughout the page as well.
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:30 pm
by matthijs
What I do know is that Google advices the webdevelopers to make a choice between one of them. But I don't think it matters which.
I don't believe that Google would change the page rank algorithm to promote the non-www type domains over the others. They would shoot them selves in the foot with that. The bottom line for them is to get the best results on top (read: the sites with the most adsense on it), having the www/non-www influence that could only make those results worse.
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:29 pm
by alex.barylski
but that's 8 unicode character bytes that the servers don't have to process
Ummmm...are domain names Unicode? I thought they were restructed to ASCII?
Anyway, I don't think for your average site would be 8 bytes, everything under u+00FF or whatever it is only a single character.
Also, I'm not sure how big an impact that would have, I believe browsers cache the IP of a resolved domain locally for TTL period.
Al that being said, I certainly agree that adding the '
www.' is potentially extraneous and wasteful. Much like double quoted strings when there are no variables interpolated or escape characters are not needed \n\t and so on.
Interesting

Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:36 pm
by volomike
My client just got back with me. Tells me it just "feels right" in this case. To each his own hammer to knock himself out, I guess. Tis easy for me to do implement either way.
The word coming back to me is that yes, page rank does not appear to be affected either way.
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:36 pm
by VladSun
volomike wrote:Typically I have been setting up my Apache2 .htaccess file so that if you connect to my domain with "
www.", I redirect you back with a 301 permanent redirect to the domain without the "
www."
I think you should use:
1. CNAME for www in your DNS zone
2. ServerAlias
http://www.domain.tld in you Apache httpd config file
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:44 pm
by omniuni
www is just a designation for "World Wide Web" back from when servers that were actually configured for the WWW were rare. For a long time WWW was a "standard" but google and other search engines don't care any more. Do decide on one, though. Personally I stick to not using www, because it's shorter and more to the point.... the www is always optional. Also, of course, make sure that both bring you to the website just in case!
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:50 pm
by sergio-pro
Interesting, how much power consumption can be reduced by omitting www in all addresses.
Not a joke - really interesting - any assumptions?

Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:05 pm
by alex.barylski
In the grand scheme, quite a lot.
I would assume there are close to trillion web pages accessed every day. If each time (assume no caching) a web page is requested the DN is resolved to an IP via gethostbyname() that s 4 or 8 bytes saved.
32 bits of data multipled by 1 trillion page requests is huge.
Realistically, it wouldn't improve the environment enough that you or I would see a difference, much like the holes in the Ozone have be reduced marginally. But the difference is measurable and the same would be true of saving those 4 or 8 bytes every so often.
It's the crux of performance, security and the environment. No one cares until it's usually too late (or at least later than ideal). 50 years ago my grand father would have laughed at me, had I told him by 2000 more people would be buying bottled water than drinking it out of the tap.
I haven't drank water from a foutain or city tap in probably close to 20 years. Next we'll be buying bottle oxygen to breathe better, thats a scary thought.
Cheers,
Alex
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:55 pm
by Chris Corbyn
VladSun wrote:volomike wrote:Typically I have been setting up my Apache2 .htaccess file so that if you connect to my domain with "
www.", I redirect you back with a 301 permanent redirect to the domain without the "
www."
I think you should use:
1. CNAME for www in your DNS zone
2. ServerAlias
http://www.domain.tld in you Apache httpd config file
I think it's a bad idea to have the same service responding on both domains. I prefer the rewrite rule approach so that all traffic is on the same domain. Granted, I haven't always done that but I see the merits of NOT responding on both www. and no-www domains.
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:17 pm
by josh
sergio-pro wrote:Interesting, how much power consumption can be reduced by omitting www in all addresses.
Not a joke - really interesting - any assumptions?

How much did you just waste
Seriously though it doesnt matter just pick 1 or the other. Make sure you're not just redirecting for the one case, make sure that anything.yourdomain.com redirects to the main site, don't make duplicate content available via http and https at the same time either.
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:44 am
by Chris Corbyn
jshpro2 wrote:sergio-pro wrote:Interesting, how much power consumption can be reduced by omitting www in all addresses.
Not a joke - really interesting - any assumptions?

How much did you just waste
Seriously though it doesnt matter just pick 1 or the other. Make sure you're not just redirecting for the one case, make sure that anything.yourdomain.com redirects to the main site, don't make duplicate content available via http and https at the same time either.
Not sure about the anything.domain.com thing, but don't see the harm. I completely agree that duplicating content at different URLs is a bad practice. I've stopped doing this but I still have sites live (swiftmailer.org for one) that provide the same content on each.
Redirect FTW!

Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:01 am
by VladSun
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:34 pm
by josh
Chris Corbyn wrote:Not sure about the anything.domain.com thing, but don't see the harm.
Matt Cutt's has spoken about it, its not just my opinion its straight from the horse's mouth

Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:36 pm
by Burrito
jshpro2 wrote:Matt Cutt's has spoken about it, its not just my opinion its straight from the horse's mouth

hey Josh!
Re: Using the "www."
Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:52 pm
by josh
What it do! I'm still using that AIM ( authorize.net ) base code ( sleightly modified ) in actually a few production apps

Hope all has been well with you.