Recently I installed SSL on my website so I was trying to submit the new, changed URL to Google Webmasters tools: from http to https. There I noticed that I hadn’t instructed the Webmasters tools settings to consider just a single version of my URL without www. Until yesterday the domain was pointing to both the www and without www versions of the URL credible-content.com. Although I had made the needed changes in the .htaccess file and had also chosen the version without www as my main URL in my domain hosting Control Panel I wasn’t sure whether it needs to be exclusively entered in Google’s Webmasters tools or not. Then, when I was trying to do that, it repeatedly asked me to verify that I actually own the domain name www.credible-content.com. I didn’t know that I separately had to add this particular domain name and then verify it. Anyway, I was able to achieve that.
2 things come to my mind. First, all my URLs should go to the version that is without www and now since I have installed the SSL, http has become https. In the ensuing confusion, I have added all the 3 versions of my website to Google’s Webmasters tools, the one with www, without www (that is http) and https. I’m still figuring out eventually which single domain I should keep in the dashboard. A bit confusing for someone who doesn’t manage Google analytics and Google’s Webmasters tools as a profession. I mean, I have been using these services for quite some time, but not very deeply, which I intend to do from now on.
Why am I writing this? With all these settings you may experience some 404 errors while Google decides which URLs to crawl, index and rank. But I’m sure eventually things will settle to a single, https URL.