To WWW or Not WWW

[babyoh]

 :rose: on another board, SpyDie has a broken link - because a typo left 1 "W" out of "WWW", so the link is posted as:
http://ww.landzdown.com (i tried, but couldn't post there, to alert him)
:shock: i almost always strip my URL's of "index.html" and the "www."
leaving out the WWW works fine 99.9% of the time, but every so often a page won't load.
* Question:
i know it stands for World Wide Wide, but does anyone know why the "www." is in URL's AT ALL? - if it's NOT NECESSARY?
(i've tried Googling for more info, but, well... "www url" doesn't bring up the hits i'm looking for...)

[Herumutsu]

These days, it is not uncommon for people to leave out the WWW-prefix - most servers are configured to recognize that fact, so it should usually work just as well. I can see why people would consider it unnecessary and annoying, for the "http://"-part should really be all the server needs to determine how to reply.

This can be even more annoying on the server-side of especially restricitve, web-based-networks, when care needs to be taken that there is no difference in permissions between the WWW variation and non-WWW variation of the domain. Some administrators even incorporate code to get rid of the 'www.'-part displayed in the address-bar of people visiting their sites for good - if one were to visit such a site with said prefix, it would simply disappear upon access.

[babyoh]

interesting, herumutsu, thanks for the info...
:rose: i've noticed when i use "http://google.com", it shows as http://www.google.com when i connect...
* i've read it's a good idea to add the last "/" at the end of a URL - but myspace.com profiles get a PAGE NOT FOUND, if you add that last END-SLASH. (Weird... something to do with them being in ASP?)
:shock:
funny - i just typed a domain name (WITHOUT .com or .net) into OPERA & FIREFOX, and both got the right page, by pre-pending "http://" or "http://www." and adding ".com/" to the end of the domain. the same thing in INTERNET EXPLORER, though, triggers the MSN search engine, which DOESN'T get me any closer to the page/URL...
:blink1: since google bases page popularity on inbound links, i used to be concerned that google WOULDN'T know 200 inbounds to www.mywebsite.com + 200 inbounds to mywebsite.com = 400 to THE SAME PAGE...
:rose:
not so, though. the reason i thought this, was that google handles search quieries differently, depending on the www. for ex:
inurl:landzdown.com has 4,970 hits
inurl:www.landzdown.com has 4,770 hits

site:www.landzdown.com = 4950 hits
site:landzdown.com = 4800 hits

etc...