Do you prefer domains with "www" or without?

Do you prefer URL's with "www" or without?

  • I like to see domains with "www" like "www.blacknight.com"

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I prefer them without, like "blacknight.com"

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0
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link8r

New Member
Inspired by another thread in this forum and also trying to work out my own mind, I thought I might ask what people thought:

Do you prefer domains with "www" preceding them, like

(A) http://"www.blacknight.com"
OR
(B) http://"blacknight.com"

Thank you to everyone who votes :)

David aka PrimaryPosition:confused:
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
What about a 3rd option - it depends, but please make sure that one redirects to the other :)
 

link8r

New Member
I thought about adding "no preference" but I figured thats the view de jour so I thought I'd corral it into a decision!?!
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Well it's an interesting question

If you're using a "hack" the "www" breaks the tone ...

But for a site that's targetting the general public I guess the "www" is kinda of necessary as it's "expected"
 

link8r

New Member
Ok. but if you consider a lot of people - many (most nearly?) don't use address bars, they use Google. I watch everyone I meet look up web addresses - its something I get people to do if I can when I meet them. Vast majority of people never use the web address bar. They google the address. In that context, it seems to me that "www" is redundant.
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Ok. but if you consider a lot of people - many (most nearly?) don't use address bars, they use Google. I watch everyone I meet look up web addresses - its something I get people to do if I can when I meet them. Vast majority of people never use the web address bar. They google the address. In that context, it seems to me that "www" is redundant.
We get a lot of calls from people asking for the address for various things .. if it's not "www" they get confused
 

link8r

New Member
Interesting - is there a difference to auditory based memory recollection and typing? I think there is...Ask someone their PIN number -v- them automatically typing it in without "thinking about it" - as an example - but enough pop-psychology I'm out of my depth!!

I work with 5 very well known Irish brands and the number of searches for "myirishfamilydomainname ie" and "www myirishfamilyname ie" is pretty much heavily skewed in favour of not using the "www" sub-domain in the past 2 years, certainly the past 12 months.
 

Satanta

New Member
Do you prefer domains with "www" preceding them, like
Personally, I prefer non www domains. Shorter, easier to share, no irrelevant information.

That said, as highlighted by the situation Andy found himself in on the other thread, I most commonly default to the www version as you can't control external links and some users will default to what they're most familiar with which in this case is the dub dub dub.
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
It's possible that there is a difference between the two

Ultimately as long as BOTH www.domain.tld and domain.tld resolve correctly AND to the same content it shouldn't matter

But since you raise the question ..

Take getpersonalwith.me - if you chuck in the "www" it doesn't make any sense

We refer to Amazon.com - we don't ever refer to it with the www ..
 

Satanta

New Member
I work with 5 very well known Irish brands and the number of searches for "myirishfamilydomainname ie" and "www myirishfamilyname ie" is pretty much heavily skewed in favour of not using the "www" sub-domain in the past 2 years, certainly the past 12 months.
I wonder how this compares to how many type the url directly using the www vs. non? I'd imagine, or assume (based on experience of backlinks), that most typing the URL (as they might if linking) would default to www.
 

link8r

New Member
Many sites default to without "www" for backlinking - twitter for example, its 3 chars when you have less than 140!

You're "supposed" to pick 1 and redirect the other. I think we're all quite old skool - but when you're next with non-IT types, check out how they find sites. Its not uncommon for sites to have 85% of traffic come from Google because people just dont use URL's anymore (so less direct traffic)

It's very interesting...

Watch brands on TV - like RTE - it's all "RTE.ie/2fm" or "twitter.com/FiannaFailOut" etc
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Based on what we've been seeing a LOT of people are using Google as a browser.
They're not searching
They think it is the browser
 

link8r

New Member
Based on what we've been seeing a LOT of people are using Google as a browser.
They're not searching
They think it is the browser

Yes -that's what I mean.

I had a strange one last week. "Nobody can e-mail us at "www.mypropertydomain.com"

I want to stop replying because I'm hoping you'll do the Myers Briggs test I posted....:)
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
I did that test, but as usual I wasn't happy with them. A lot of the time it's not binary.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Tom

Member
I voted www - for now if I had to pick one it would be that. Taking the blacknight url example....

http://"www.blacknight.com" - looks professional and complete (imo)
http://"blacknight.com" - looks incomplete and less professional (imo)

As I mentioned in the other post if you're trying to be hip and cool drop the www, if you want to look more professional keep the www - but that's just my thoughts.
 

MOH

New Member
I'd always go with the www - most non-techy people I know always type it when entering the url.
Be that in the address bar or the search box - I remember hearing before that one of the highest search terms for boards was 'www.boards.ie'.

Though as you said, a lot of people will also just google the business/site name.

Maybe it's length-dependent - with a short, one word name, people might be likely to just try www.blah.com or .ie, whereas for mylongmultiwordname they'd be less confident about having it right and search for it.
That is of course not counting the people who always just type in the search box anyway.
 

link8r

New Member
The test we did was 4 choices, you had to pick least likely and most likely and then 2 in the middle. As many times as we repeated it, we got the same result. The questions aren't situational - its just an open question - bloody annoying!
 

MOH

New Member
On a side note - I didn't actually see the poll the first time in. Maybe it didn't render properly for some reason (unlikely), but I think my brain registered it as a banner ad and ignored it. Odd.
 

andywozhere

Member
My personal preference is no www. Using a www means I need to read or even, God forbid, actually type extra characters.

That said there may be a good argument for using a www if that is what people expect.
 
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