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A domain is a marketing tool as much as anything else on your web page. If customers see a "www." in the address bar, it slightly dilutes the visibility of your

A domain is a marketing tool as much as anything else on your web page. If customers see a "www." in the address bar, it slightly dilutes the visibility of your brand in the main domain. I believe this is more important than any technical issue listed.

wolco 8y ago
Does it dilute or position your brand? www for most gives the initial impression of web/technical/site to the average person. Removing www dilutes the association to those concepts. Using the www in print removes the need to include http:// http:// otherwise domain.io might be confusing.
- jamieweb 8y ago
  Using www probably helps for the newer gTLDs, as the average non-technical user may not realise that something like ".productions" or ".hockey" is a valid domain. In the past I've heard of non-technical users adding ".com" to the end of one of these gTLDs, which obviously takes them to a completely different website. I wonder whether anybody has used this as a form of pseudo-typosquatting or phishing?
  - dmurray 8y ago
    Anyone who paid $200k for their gTLD probably already bought the .com for the same name, or at least it's owned by someone bigger than a typosquatter.
    - jamieweb 8y ago
      Good point actually, I might look into this and see.
- tgb 8y ago
  Yes, I have this concern with the new deluge of TLDs. Now something.anything could be a link but also means it might not be. www.something.anything would at least make that clear if your TLD is not easily recognizable. Even recognizable brands give me double-takes when they use their TLD like a .google address doesn't look like an address at all.
- z3t4 8y ago
  Yeh I always wonder if it's a FTP, SMB, DAVS, IRC, NNTP, etc. www makes it obvious it's a world wide web :P
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
For what it's worth, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, all disagree. They all redirect to www.
- vortico 8y ago
  That it good evidence, but being the largest websites, they have thousands of subdomains on those domains, so they're kinda technically forced to use www.
dasil003 8y ago
A slight branding dilution in an area that very few users look at or pay attention to that represents maybe 2% of the screen real estate and smallest font when a user is on your site outweighs the benefit of being able to use a regular CNAME for increased flexibility and scope your cookies to your actual website leaving subdomains available for purposes that would not be viable security-wise if you are using the root domain? Sorry but such a blanket statement is naive and arrogant—you've got to look at individual use cases before making a call on this.
deleted 8y ago
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snowwrestler 8y ago
Customers do not look in the address bar, so it has no brand impact. When putting your domain in print, you should omit the www if you can. Just catch the root domain request and redirect to www if you want it.

wolco 8y ago

Does it dilute or position your brand? www for most gives the initial impression of web/technical/site to the average person. Removing www dilutes the association to those concepts. Using the www in print removes the need to include http:// http:// otherwise domain.io might be confusing.

jamieweb 8y ago
Using www probably helps for the newer gTLDs, as the average non-technical user may not realise that something like ".productions" or ".hockey" is a valid domain. In the past I've heard of non-technical users adding ".com" to the end of one of these gTLDs, which obviously takes them to a completely different website. I wonder whether anybody has used this as a form of pseudo-typosquatting or phishing?
- dmurray 8y ago
  Anyone who paid $200k for their gTLD probably already bought the .com for the same name, or at least it's owned by someone bigger than a typosquatter.
  - jamieweb 8y ago
    Good point actually, I might look into this and see.
tgb 8y ago
Yes, I have this concern with the new deluge of TLDs. Now something.anything could be a link but also means it might not be. www.something.anything would at least make that clear if your TLD is not easily recognizable. Even recognizable brands give me double-takes when they use their TLD like a .google address doesn't look like an address at all.
z3t4 8y ago
Yeh I always wonder if it's a FTP, SMB, DAVS, IRC, NNTP, etc. www makes it obvious it's a world wide web :P

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

For what it's worth, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, all disagree. They all redirect to www.

vortico 8y ago
That it good evidence, but being the largest websites, they have thousands of subdomains on those domains, so they're kinda technically forced to use www.

dasil003 8y ago

A slight branding dilution in an area that very few users look at or pay attention to that represents maybe 2% of the screen real estate and smallest font when a user is on your site outweighs the benefit of being able to use a regular CNAME for increased flexibility and scope your cookies to your actual website leaving subdomains available for purposes that would not be viable security-wise if you are using the root domain? Sorry but such a blanket statement is naive and arrogant—you've got to look at individual use cases before making a call on this.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

snowwrestler 8y ago

Customers do not look in the address bar, so it has no brand impact. When putting your domain in print, you should omit the www if you can. Just catch the root domain request and redirect to www if you want it.