With and without WWW

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Michael Martinez: I would use whichever URL format matches how your site is published. It`s normally a trivial thing but if you don`t redirect from one version to another you`re creating dead links. Those are really different host names. So matching the published version of the site`s URLs is best.
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  Nathan Nikolay Gaidy: Thank you for clearing that out the way for me.
  Both lead to the same page but they are totally different websites basically?
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  Nathan Nikolay Gaidy: On the same note... buying a premium domain with no `www` is "better" for SEO purposes?
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  Michael Martinez: It sounds like you have redirected one host to the other. Normally they are separate sites. The "www." is an option for every domain. It has nothing to do with the cost of a domain or its top-level domain name.
  
  The "www." is a special host name but many people equate it with a subdomain like "blog." or "news.", etc.
  
  That is why you must redirect the non-www to the www. version or vice versa, to ensure that links don`t send people and search engines to dead URls.
  
  Some Website applications - including WordPress - may publish content on both URLs by default but they are intercepting traffic to the server and rewriting the URL requests.
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  Michael Martinez: The Internet was designed by a committee of thousands of people working over several decades.
  
  It doesn`t always make sense.
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  Nathan Nikolay Gaidy: Thank you so much!
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  Ammon Johns: Canonicalization starts with you - the version YOU decide is the `right` one. There are many signals Google use for canonicalization, and common usage is one of them. Be consistent - pick YOUR version, and then use it consistently.
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  Nathan Nikolay Gaidy: What if my client already mixed up his backlink profile and it`s mixed with both types of links
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  Michael Martinez: Nathan Nikolay Gaidy When the search engines see enough canonical signals to pick one URL over the other, they`ll combine the signals from both URLs into that one URL`s data.
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  Nathan Nikolay Gaidy: So what it means is that in the beginning it`s important but Google solves the problem anyways