Differences Between www and no www on the URL

Hi

I was reading this thread - Cerberus SEO 101 Guide - Search Engine Opitmization
http://admin-talk.com/threads/cerberus-seo-101-guide-search-engine-opitmization.4012/

wherein the OP mentioned that the URLs can be re-written for allowing use of www or no www.

I could not make out how far that would be good. I mean, what difference does it make if I have a site that opens via - www.xyz.com or xyz.com. Yes, there might be some SEO factors involved. Is there anything I am missing out on this? Would be glad if anyone can explain the use and good.

 

I also want to know.....

 

Without the www ???

 

the www is banned on my sites. There is no point in having a sub-directory for my sites. Either way you choose it is good practice to use .htaccess to prevent one or the other. Otherwise it can be a duplicate content issue. You can tell google which one you want them to use as well.

 

That is what was mentioned on the thread too but from what I know, the content or the duplicate content is resident on the pages - isn't it?.

 

Exactly...
Google and other search engines will take the www and non-www and two separate sites.
With that said, you can define this in your google webmaster tools, but I like to make things easy and just define it myself on my URL's.

 

As far as I can tell, there's no difference between WWW and no WWW, as long as you make sure to only use one address and redirect the other address to the primary one (to get rid of duplicate content).

Doesn't really matter which one you choose, just make it so the one you're not using redirects to the primary one.

 

OMG!. I had no idea about this. I am thankful to the OP of that discussion and also all of you dear people who have responded above and clarified my doubts. I am going to make the www.mywebsitename.com fixed now just to avoid the further complications. Maybe I should edit it in the .htaccess for ease and also update the same on Google Webmasters. (maybe I might need to know how to set this on Google Webmasters).

 

I wasn't aware that Google treated the www and no-www versions as two separated sites. I prefer the sites without www, it looks better in my opinion, that's why I always redirect www to the main domain.