What’s up with the w’s? The www? The World Wide Web? What is up with that part of an Internet address….
The “world wide web”… that’s what that is. It’s a subdomain prefix that notifies the robot looking up the page to look externally to the internet.
Back in the day offices and nerd homes had “intranets” or internal networks that were a closed loop. They had their own pages that loaded on the network. This is how things worked pre-y2k.
But then smart phones and connected devices showed up on the market and the industry ended up evolving into an assumption that your request was an internet website anyway. So the www’s are less required now.
They are still relevant; but not necessary.
Who still uses www?
Only some oddball sites with companies using old tech and local networks need to make sure they override their site to include the www’s so they can see the externally loaded page.
If you have a target market who is… an older and more vintage group… and they would be alarmed if there was no www included with the url; that would be another reason to have the www’s included by default.
When should I really care about keeping the www’s?
Google and SEO. That’s where you should really care!
Google likes consistency. So if you change the preferred way your website loads (with our with-out the www’s) then google change your ranking (usually in a negative way.) So in order to make sure we preserve the current format of your site we search the site in google to check how it’s already loading. This becomes our standard and unless there’s a good reason we try and keep it in that format.
So what else should I keep in mind with the www’s?
DNS. The routing. You have to make sure your “www” record is included and correct. Usually this means having the www record loop back to the primary A record with a “@“ value. But check with your hosting and web dev to make sure you have this correct.
With out the “www” record (either A or name but never both) your World Wide Web prefix will not work with your site.
Another www complication… SSL and https
You have to make sure your SSL certificate is issued with the standard form of your domain AND the www version of your site. Because the robots view your www as a subdomain it’s a whole other site to be covered by the SSL cert. Make sure your SSL has both forms of your domain listed. This could complicate the way your site loads if the SSL doesn’t cover both version of https.
DNS forwards… are also domain and subdomain specific… so you need to make sure you’re forwarding the standard version of your site; and then add another forwarding for the www’s as well. That way both versions also forward.