Clients ask me this more than you might expect. Here is the honest answer — and the one thing that actually does matter.
Clients ask me this more than you might expect. They see their site loading at www.theirbusiness.com and wonder if they should have gone with just theirbusiness.com instead — or the other way around. And occasionally they ask mid-project, which means they are about to make me do extra work for no reason.
So here is the honest answer: it barely matters. But “barely” is not “never,” so let me break it down properly.
What Is the Difference?
A naked domain (also called a root domain or apex domain) looks like this:
theirbusiness.com
A www domain adds the subdomain prefix:
www.theirbusiness.com
That www is technically a subdomain — the same way blog.theirbusiness.com or shop.theirbusiness.com would be. It just happens to be one that the internet used as a universal standard for decades. People who built websites in the 90s and early 2000s typed www the same way they typed http:// — it was just part of the ritual.
Does It Affect SEO?
No. Not if your site is set up correctly.
Google treats www.example.com and example.com as separate URLs by default — but any decent hosting setup and any decent WordPress configuration will handle the redirect and canonical tags so the search engine only indexes one version. When that is done right, there is no ranking difference between the two.
The keyword here is when that is done right. The problem is not which version you choose — it is choosing one and not properly redirecting the other. That is how you split your SEO authority across two versions of the same site without realizing it.
When www Actually Has a Technical Advantage
For most small business websites, this section will never apply. But it is worth knowing.
www gives you more infrastructure flexibility. Because www is technically a subdomain, DNS handles it differently than a root domain. This becomes relevant when you want to use a CDN, set up complex cookie policies across subdomains, or build out infrastructure with multiple subdomains (like app.example.com running separately from www.example.com). At scale, www is simply easier to work with.
Locally hosted email is one real edge case. If a business has email hosted on their own office network and uses a naked domain, some network configurations will conflict — the server gets confused about whether a request for example.com is going to the website or somewhere internal. This is not common, but it does happen, and it is one of the only situations where the www vs. naked choice is forced by something other than preference.
For a five-page small business website on shared hosting? None of this applies.
The Branding Argument (And Why It Has Mostly Expired)
A few years ago, people made the case that naked domains looked cleaner and more modern. And that was fair — example.com does look less cluttered than www.example.com.
But here is the thing: modern browsers hide the www in the address bar anyway. Chrome, Firefox, Safari — they all strip it from the displayed URL. So your visitors most likely never see it either way. The visual argument for naked domains has quietly become irrelevant for most use cases.
The One Rule That Actually Matters
Pick a version. Redirect the other one. That is it.
Your site should be accessible at exactly one URL, and every attempt to reach the other version should 301 redirect to it automatically. This is not optional — it is basic hygiene. It protects your SEO, prevents duplicate content issues, and keeps your analytics clean.
In WordPress, this is usually handled at the hosting level (via your .htaccess file or server config) and confirmed in Settings > General where you set your WordPress Address and Site Address. If both fields point to the same version and your host has the redirect in place, you are covered.
If you are not sure whether your redirects are set up correctly, you can check with a free tool like Redirect Checker — just test both versions of your domain and confirm they both land on the same final URL.
What Should You Actually Choose?
My recommendation: do not overthink it.
If you are building a new site, either option is fine. I tend to use www for client sites by default because of the infrastructure flexibility, even if it never becomes relevant — it costs nothing to have and it removes one potential headache down the road.
If your site already exists and is indexed, do not switch. The migration risk is not worth the aesthetic preference, and most of your visitors cannot see the difference in their browser anyway.
Pick one. Redirect the other. Move on to something that actually matters for your business.
Key Takeaways
- There is no SEO advantage to either option when redirects and canonicals are configured properly
- www has minor technical advantages for larger infrastructure setups — irrelevant for most small business sites
- Modern browsers hide “www” in the URL bar, so the visual argument for naked domains is mostly moot
- The only thing that actually matters: pick one version and 301 redirect the other
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