Search engines treat www.example.com and example.com as separate hosts. Choose one as your canonical version, redirect the other to it with a 301, and use it consistently in links, sitemaps and canonical tags.
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Comppound runs SEO and AI search for SaaS companies. We plan what to publish, produce it with AI, and every page passes automated checks, and a person reviews samples and anything high-risk.
- Published to your site and tracked in Search Console
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Which to choose
Either works for search. Pick the one that suits your hosting and brand, then stay with it. Changing later means a site-wide redirect and some risk.
Making it stick
Redirect all variants, including HTTP, to the single HTTPS hostname in one hop where possible, and register the chosen version in Google Search Console.
Common mistakes
Serving both versions
Two live hosts create duplicate pages and split links.
Frequently Asked Questions
No ranking effect is documented either way. Consistency is what matters.
Keep reading
- 301 Redirect: A 301 redirect is an HTTP response telling browsers and search engines a URL has moved permanently to a new address.
- Canonical URL: A canonical URL is the version of a page search engines treat as the main one when several URLs show the same or very similar content.
- HTTPS: HTTPS is HTTP sent over an encrypted TLS connection. It protects visitors' data, is a lightweight Google ranking signal and is expected on every page.
- Redirect Chain: A redirect chain is when a URL redirects to another URL that redirects again, forcing crawlers and visitors through several hops.
- Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's free console for site owners. It shows how Bing crawls and indexes a site and offers SEO reports and URL submission.
- Content delivery network: A CDN is a network of servers worldwide that caches and serves a site's files close to each visitor, cutting load times and shielding the origin server.
- Crawl Errors: Crawl errors are failures that happen when a search engine tries to fetch a URL, such as server errors, redirect problems, blocked pages or DNS failures.
- Crawlability: Crawlability is how easily search engine and AI crawlers can discover and fetch the pages on a site.
