setting a preferred domain?!

[HRobertson]

Does anyone have any suggestions as to whether or not to set a preferred domain (www versus no www)?

Also, if I do set a preferred domain, when I set up my redirects do I need to create them for each individual URL on my site or just the highlest level (www.website.com)?...and is it best to do this in the .htaccess file?

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

[wetgravy]

There is no real way to preset that in happening. Your website of http://www.example.site/ has a few things ... when you set up your site the subdomain is WWW because everyone and their mothers has a www to identify the initial domain most browsers and hosts support being able to type in http://example.site/ and defaulting to www.example.site without showing the www ... it's still there ... just not showing. So it's more of what a person going to your site prefers to do. Also, the practice of dropping the http://www off of website addresses was for advertising to simplify the website address process.

 

[HRobertson]

Google provides the option

Google provides the option to set your preferred domain and then suggests you create redirects for your non-preferred (www or non-www).

I was just curious as to anyones experience with this. If the preferred domain is not established it will index www.mysite.com and mysite.com separately, and in turn, lower your ranking.

Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you.