www vs non-www: Which Should You Use?

www vs non www is one of the few SEO questions with a genuinely simple answer: neither one is better, so pick either and permanently redirect the other to it. Google does not favour example.com over www.example.com or the reverse. What it does do is treat them as two different addresses, so if both versions load your site without a redirect, you have effectively published the same content at two places and split your signals between them.

That split is the only real risk here, and it is easy to fix. Below is how to check which version your site actually serves, how to set the redirect so it holds, the small technical reasons some people prefer www, and the mistakes that make a switch messier than it needs to be.

Neither Version Wins for SEO

There is no ranking bonus attached to the three letters. Google’s guidance treats www.example.com and example.com as separate URLs that may serve duplicate content, and its job is then to pick one as the canonical version to index. Nothing in that process rewards or penalises either form.

So ignore any advice that claims one converts better or ranks higher. The choice is about consistency and a couple of minor technical details. Once you have chosen, every part of your setup should agree: your WordPress settings, your redirects, your internal links, your sitemap and your canonical tags. The consistency is the SEO work, not the choice itself.

Why You Still Have to Pick One

If both versions load, you have two addresses for every page on your site. Some people link to one, some to the other. Search engines have to guess which is canonical, and while they are generally good at it, you are asking them to solve a problem you could have removed.

There are practical costs too. Analytics can report the same page as two entries. A cookie set on one version may not be seen on the other, which breaks logins and carts in ways that are miserable to debug. And any redirect rule that does not account for both versions will behave inconsistently depending on which address the visitor arrived at. One canonical version removes all of that at once.

How to Check Which One You Serve

Start with the quick test. Type the version you do not normally use into a browser, without the protocol, and press enter. If the address bar changes to your usual version, a redirect is in place. If the page loads and stays on the version you typed, both are live and you have work to do.

For a definitive picture, run both versions through a redirect checker. You want to see one clear hop: the version you rejected returns a 301 pointing at the version you chose, and the chosen one returns 200 with no further hops. Two things to watch for: a 302 instead of a 301, and a chain, for example non-www to HTTP www to HTTPS www, which wastes a hop on every visit.

Setting the Redirect in WordPress

Three places need to agree. In Settings, General, both WordPress Address and Site Address should show your chosen version with https. WordPress uses these to build links and will redirect some requests based on them, so getting them right does much of the work.

Next, the actual redirect. Many hosts have a setting for the canonical domain, and using it is the cleanest option because it works at the server level. Otherwise set one sitewide rule that redirects the version you rejected to the one you chose, and make sure it is a 301, not a 302, because only the permanent type tells search engines to consolidate on the destination. If you manage it in WordPress, a tool such as DevDome Redirect Manager lets you set the type explicitly per rule and purges the cache when the rule changes, which matters for a rule this sitewide.

The Small Case for www

Two technical points favour www, and neither is about rankings. The first is cookie scope: a cookie set on a bare domain such as example.com is sent to every subdomain, including things like shop.example.com or a status page, while a cookie set on www.example.com stays with www. On a site with several subdomains that separation is genuinely useful.

The second is DNS flexibility. A www address can point at a provider using a CNAME record, which makes some CDN and hosting setups simpler, whereas a bare domain traditionally cannot use a CNAME. Many DNS providers now work around this with flattening or ALIAS records, so it is less of a constraint than it once was. If neither point applies to you, non-www is shorter and reads more cleanly.

Common Mistakes When Switching

The most common is an incomplete switch. Internal links, hardcoded image URLs and menu items still point at the old version, so every visitor takes an extra hop and every crawl wastes budget on redirects. Search and replace the old version in your content and settings after the redirect is in place.

The rest of the list: using a 302, so signals never consolidate; letting a chain form through HTTP; a canonical tag pointing at the version you just redirected away from; forgetting that Search Console treats www and non-www as separate properties, so you need one for the version you now use; and not purging your caches, which can keep serving the pre-change behaviour long after the rule is correct.

Getting It Right Once

This is a decision you should only have to make once, so do it deliberately. Established site: keep what you already have and redirect the other version. New site: pick either, leaning to www if you plan to run subdomains or a CDN on a bare domain.

Then verify from the outside rather than trusting the dashboard. Check both versions, on both http and https, in a logged-out private window, and confirm you get exactly one 301 landing on your chosen address. Update your internal links, resubmit your sitemap, add the right Search Console property, and the www question is closed for good.