Website 101 Question: www.MYSITE.com or MYSITE.com google and SSL

[Starbuck]

These are such obvious questions, I can't find the answer on the web through my searches.

My embarrassing questions:

1. If my website can be seen when typing either: www.MYSITE.com or http://MYSITE.com in the URL which is better to use in google and all around referencing?

2. I am changing my current SSL cert from secure.MYSITE.com to the just the root, should it be for https://www.MYSITE.com or https://MYSITE.com?

If I had to choose, I would leave off the www, but as I have made mistakes before :ytthud:, I wanted to know what you guys thought...:teach:

[happety]

I'm not sure it matters, but I believe for SEO purposes it's good to pick one or the other. My site is a www.me.com, but that's mostly because I can't help but type www before typing in any URL.

I do think that google sees "www.you.com" and "you.com" as separate and can rank them differently, which to me seems can mess up both.

I would simply pick one and then do a permanent redirect to it from the other in your .htaccess file.

rewritecond %{http_host} ^yoursite.com
rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The example above permanently redirects anyone who types in or links to yoursite.com to www.yoursite.com. Just do it in reverse for the opposite.

As far as SSL, if it's going to be on your root, you just pick whichever one is the permanent address - if someone goes to the other, they are redirected to the correct one.

I'm not the one to answer this for SSL, but I guess one would do a permanent redirect from http:// to https:// - is that two entries?

One for http://www.yoursite.com and one for http://yoursite.com both to https://yoursite.com?

[Andilinks]

For the purpose of Google search you can go to their Webmaster tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/), register and pick your preference so they won't be confused if others link to you using the wrong one.
http://www.andistars.com/g.jpg

[McDuff]

Look for your target group.

I think that quite a lot of people out there still are confused :umm: that you can leave out the http://, let alone the www in an address. I really have a problem explaining that yes, sub.mydomain.com does not need www in front and yes, mydomain.com is valid and will bring you to www.mydomain.com also.

Therefore, my 5 cents: KISS (keep it simple stupid), go for the least confusing option for your target group, smart people will find you anyway.

Keep it www.mydomain.com, it is never wrong or confusing. Where necessary, inform search engines, code in htaccess, or whatever that www.mydomain and mydomain are the same.