SEO perspectives on having no WWW subdomain.
 

It is pretty useless.. Are there any negatives to dropping the www on a newly launched site?

The only thing I can think of is that people will still make links to www.domain.com/whatever not realizing you don't use it. While they'll get redirected just fine, is that an issue with the search engines? Do those links "count" just as much?

Anything else to be concerned about?

when it comes to url canonicalization u might wanna read up on this:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-ad...onicalization/

Yes, I know it is mattcuts but still a good 5 min read on this topic wouldn't hurt .. would it?!

for someone who is claiming it is 'pretty useless' you sure don't seem very certain Socks :)

.htaccess will fix those issues.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain.com
rewriterule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

I've heard anecdotally search engines prefer www but I can't bring myself to add useless characters :)

Either one is fine as long as both are not available. Follow emthree's advice regarding the redirect to use either www. or non-www. strictly.

I meant useless being that the www is redundant, and has no effective use.. It's just like a filler subdomain that we've all been accustomed to.

So to be clear:

if we start a new site fresh with no www, and we have a page like domain.com/jenny/ and all our links point to that, however, someone with a blog references that and writes their link to http://www.domain.com/jenny/ (and the user gets redirected to the non-www) does that link carry just as much weight, even though they're not technically linking to the proper URL?

years ago when i worked at an SEO/SEM agency, one of the "head" SEO guys said that www implied "World Wide Web" while the non www was implied for "local" networks, such as an office, etc., were only a limited amount of people were supposed to have access. so his push was always use www when possible.

maybe it was true back in 2003, but who knows.

WWW is a pain, but it's the correct way to do things. Not sure about SEO, but it's good to maintain internet standards.

Everyone else uses www why are you trying to be different?

www designates that host as a web server, just like ftp is an ftp server, mail is a mail server........

I have sites where I've done both and IMO the serach engines prefer that your site has the www . The reason? Probably because "legit" sites have it and so it makes your site appear more legit. I wouldn't be surprised if the SEs give you a slight over optimization penalty for not using it.

Really? LOL. I thought that's what the http did.

As far as SEO is concerned, just be consistent. Either use it or don't.

If you're rewriting the URL, yes it will have the same weight and will be clear to SEs what the proper URL is (whether its www. or non-www. or usethis.domain). If you dont rewrite, SEs will see 2 URLs.