: Why would an IT department not allow a www prefix for domains? So recently I requested a domain prefixed with www to be pointed to an existing site http://example.com/. The IT department at

@Jessie594

Maybe you are misunderstanding, or they are being too specific without explaining? A possible answer to this is because WWW is not a subdomain in most cases, it is a CNAME alias on top of an A record.

Other than that, it could be their "style" or something. Point to non-WWW and let the target pick up and mitigate whether it needs to be there or not. Could save a tiny shred of server response time in a non-WWW environment that way.

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@Ann8826881

You are right! It is tradition to have the www and therefore expected by many. Tradition that is many decades old should not be easily discarded.

At the very least, you may not be capturing the traffic that expects the Normally, I would say that you need to choose one or the other, www or non-www, but both should exist with one redirecting to the other. It is often better to redirect non-www to This answers the concern over web space, duplicate effort, and duplicate content.

Whoever created that rule likely cannot properly justify the decision without a wealth of valid reasons against to the contrary. In short, it is just a plain 'ole silly [***] thing to say and does the companies website a disservice. It misses the full potential of capturing traffic.

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@Connie744

From a SEO perspective, using a subdomain, www, splits up visits to the site though you can combine the data into one number. Some companies want to forgo the www since it just takes up space in advertising and is useless in a sense. Having a www, just to have one, is pointless and, should I say, old fashioned.

However, unless there is a technical reason or otherwise, they should just redirect www requests to the non-www site. It's easy to do but they must have their reasons.

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