www.example.com ends up in a google search now rather than attempting to redirect. However example dot com is now naked. So fixed one thing but broke another.

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name www.example.com;

        return 301 http://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        root /var/www/example.com/html;

        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        server_name example.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}