WWW or non-WWW: does it matter for your website?
It doesn't matter whether your site uses www or not. What matters is that it picks one, and that every other version of the address sends people there with a permanent redirect. In September I checked 54 therapy practice websites in the US, and 8 of them didn't.
Does it matter if my website uses www or not?
No. Google has said for years that either is fine, and the sites that do this well split almost evenly. Of the 46 sites in my sample that handled it correctly, 26 chose the www version and 20 chose the bare domain. Nobody won, because there is nothing to win.
The part that matters is quieter. Your domain can be typed four ways: with or without www, and with http or https. All four should end at the same address, and three of them should get there with a permanent redirect. When that is true, Google sees one site. When it isn't, it can see two.
What happens when both versions of my site load?
Google has to guess which one is the real site. It usually guesses well, but it is still a guess, and links that point at the other version count less clearly toward the one it picked. Your analytics can split visits between two addresses, and an AI assistant that reads your site can quote whichever address it found first.
In my sample, the 8 failures came in three shapes. Three sites loaded the same page at two or four different addresses, with no redirect at all, one of them still serving plain http. Three had one version that didn't load: a typo away from an error page. Two redirected, but different versions ended at different addresses.
None of these owners did anything wrong on purpose. The setting usually came with the domain or the hosting, and nobody went back to check it.
How do I check which version my site redirects to?
It takes two minutes. Open a private browser window and type each of the four versions of your address, one at a time. Watch the address bar after the page loads. All four should land on exactly the same address, with the padlock.
| You type | It should end at | How it should get there |
|---|---|---|
http://yoursite.com | Your chosen address | 301 or 308 redirect |
http://www.yoursite.com | Your chosen address | 301 or 308 redirect |
https://yoursite.com | Your chosen address | Loads directly if it is the one you chose, otherwise 301 or 308 |
https://www.yoursite.com | Your chosen address | Loads directly if it is the one you chose, otherwise 301 or 308 |
The browser hides the type of redirect, so for the last column use a free redirect checker such as httpstatus.io, or run curl -I http://yoursite.com in a terminal and read the first line. You are looking for 301 or 308 on every version except the one you chose, and a 200 on that one.
If you want to see what else a machine notices about your site in the same sitting, I wrote a twenty minute version of this check.
Is a 302 redirect enough, or does it have to be a 301?
Use a 301 or a 308. Both say the move is permanent. A 302 or a 307 says the move is temporary, and Google treats a temporary redirect only as a weak hint about which address is the real one. It may still end up choosing your preferred version, but you are asking it to work that out when you could simply tell it.
The good news from the sample: none of the 46 sites that passed relied on a 302 anywhere in the chain. When this goes wrong on a small site, it is almost never the redirect type. It is the missing redirect.
How do I fix it on Squarespace, Wix or WordPress?
Squarespace. In your domain settings, set the domain you want as the primary one. Squarespace redirects the other versions to it, and with SSL turned on it sends http to https. If a version still fails, it is usually a DNS record at the registrar that points somewhere else.
Wix. The domain you connect is the primary one, and Wix redirects to it. Check that the www record and the bare domain both point to Wix, following its connection instructions, or one of the two versions will not load.
WordPress. In Settings, General, make the WordPress Address and the Site Address the same, with https and your chosen www choice. The redirect itself usually lives with your host: most hosting panels have a force https option and a preferred domain option. If yours doesn't, your host can add the rule for you.
Whatever the platform, run the four-address check again after the change. A redirect you didn't test is a redirect you hope exists, and if your pages still aren't showing up after that, the next place to look is why a site can be indexed and still not appear.
Questions I get about this
Will switching from www to non-www hurt my rankings?
Not if every old address redirects permanently to the new one. Expect some movement for a few weeks while Google recrawls. If your site already works, there is no reason to switch.
Do I need to tell Google which version I chose?
The redirects tell it. A canonical tag on each page pointing to the chosen address and a sitemap that only lists that version reinforce the same message.
My site loads on both versions and nothing bad has happened. Should I still fix it?
Yes, because it costs ten minutes and removes a guess. Nothing bad happening is not the same as nothing being split.
Is this worth fixing before I spend on ads?
It is one of the first things, along with the rest of what to fix before paying for traffic. Paid clicks should land on one address you can measure.
What I can and can't claim
The numbers come from 54 private therapy practice websites in ten US metros, checked in September 2026 by requesting all four versions of each domain and recording every redirect in the chain. Across 345 sites in six samples, including five in Latin America, the failure rate was similar: 60 of 345. What I can't tell you is how much a split site costs in rankings, because the honest answer depends on the site and nobody has a clean number for it.
If you'd rather I run the four addresses and the rest of the technical basics on your site, that is part of the audit, or you can book a strategic fit call and we'll look at it together.
