If you're standardizing on one version of your domain (www or non-www) at the same time as migrating to HTTPS, the two redirects need to be combined carefully to avoid an unnecessary redirect chain — http://www → https://www → https:// (non-www), for example, is three hops when it should be one.
Doing it in a single hop (Apache example)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.yourdomain\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]This combines both conditions — wrong host or wrong protocol — into a single redirect straight to the final, correct URL, rather than chaining separate rules that each only fix one issue at a time.
Why the single-hop version matters
Each redirect hop adds latency, and while search engines do follow redirect chains, minimizing them is still good practice for both crawl efficiency and real visitor experience — especially on a slower mobile connection where each additional round trip is more noticeable.
Why combining both conditions into one rule avoids an unnecessary extra hop
Handling the www/non-www normalization and the HTTP-to-HTTPS upgrade as two separate, sequential redirects means a visitor's browser makes two round trips instead of one — combining both conditions into a single rule that redirects directly to the final, correct URL is both faster and simpler to reason about.
What search engines actually do with a multi-hop redirect chain
Search engines generally do follow redirect chains correctly, but each additional hop adds crawl overhead and a small amount of ranking signal dilution — minimizing chain length remains good practice for both crawl efficiency and genuine visitor experience, especially on slower mobile connections where each hop is more noticeable.
How to decide which version, www or non-www, to standardize on
Neither version has an inherent technical advantage — the decision is largely a matter of preference and existing convention, though maintaining whatever version already has the most accumulated backlinks and search history is generally the safer default if you're not otherwise strongly motivated toward the alternative.
What Google Search Console's preferred domain setting used to control historically
Search Console previously offered an explicit preferred domain setting letting you tell Google directly which version (www or non-www) you preferred — this specific setting has been deprecated in favor of Google inferring your preference from your actual redirect configuration, making the redirect itself the authoritative signal rather than a separate setting.
How this choice affects cookie scope for a site using subdomains
Cookies set on the www version of a domain don't automatically apply to other subdomains unless explicitly scoped to the root domain — this is a genuine technical consideration beyond pure preference if your site uses subdomains that need to share session or authentication state with the main site.
Why consistency in internal linking matters more than which version you choose
Whichever version you standardize on, the more important practical detail is ensuring every internal link across your site consistently uses that same version directly, rather than relying on the redirect to correct inconsistent internal links on every single page load.
A closing thought on making this decision once and sticking with it
Whichever version you choose, treating it as a permanent, settled decision rather than something to revisit later avoids the redirect churn and potential search ranking disruption that comes from changing your canonical domain choice more than once.
What email deliverability considerations, if any, relate to this specific choice
The www versus non-www decision has no direct effect on email deliverability, which depends on separate DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) entirely independent of your website's canonical domain choice — worth not conflating these two genuinely unrelated DNS and configuration concerns.
How to check which version currently has the most backlinks before deciding
A backlink analysis tool can show which version of your domain, www or non-www, external sites currently link to more frequently, giving a data-informed basis for the decision rather than a purely arbitrary preference if you don't already have an established convention.