My WWW is Missing

Do you use Google Chrome? If you do, this post is for you.

In recent versions of Chrome, Google has removed "trivial" subdomains like "www". They had already removed the "http://".

If you are using Chrome right now, look up at the address bar. You don't see the "http://" or the "www".

Now single left click in the address bar. The URL turns blue.

Now press "Home".

That changed didn't it? That is what Google calls trivial.

Generally that removal isn't a problem but recently I ran into a situation where it was.

I was on the phone with a Delta Vacations representative looking for hotels. She told me to go to "hotels-delta.com". That gave me a 404 error. She and I were both confused.

Here's what the full URL should have been:

https://www.hotels-delta.com/

I had to type the "www." in front of hotels-delta.com.

Here's how Ghacks describes this problem:

Another issue that users may run into is when a site uses www exclusively. Chrome displays the domain without www only and some users may try to load the domain without www as a consequence in the future. If there is no redirect, Chrome will display a 404 not found error instead.

Think about the problems this is creating for the Delta Vacations Customer Service department.

And you.