Moving to https - Webmaster Tools

[jesse-landry]

Okay so I've moved a site I work on to https finally... wasn't easy, but I won't go into the whys and hows of that.

Everything is working fine on the site and my rankings are holding steady but when I went into the GWT today I noticed that my main site (www.domain.com) has lost inquiry and traffic data almost entirely.

So I quickly added and verified the https://www.domain.com URL (even though it doesn't ask for the protocol when adding a site) and saw the traffic.. kind of. Only 2 inquiries and a few pages indexed.

Now I realize I need to submit a new sitemap and am currently working on that but don't know which account to upload it to. Do I really need two GWT sites separately and why is the other one still getting the impressions and clicks?

Basically I'm looking for somebody to shed some light on how to handle this migration from a GWT standpoint. I've attached 3 screenshots to illustrate what I'm talking about. Should be obvious what's what to those who read this post.

The Analytics shot is to show that I haven't actually lost traffic in this time and eliminate the fear of penalty or anything of the sort.

Thanks!

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[MonicaOConnor]

I just converted a site to HTTPS as well. The easiest thing for me to do was create a new property altogether. The change of address process takes forever and is a pain in the butt all the way around. I had no issues creating a new property. As all of the 301 redirects start working, the old site will begin to "disappear".

[RobertJakobson]

Google Webmaster Tools has a blog post about this very subject:_"In order to see your data correctly, you will need to verify all existing variants of your site (www., non-www., HTTPS, subdirectories, subdomains) in Google Webmaster Tools. We recommend that your preferred domains and canonical URLs are configured accordingly.__Note that if you wish to submit a Sitemap, you will need to do so for the preferred variant of your website, using the corresponding URLs. Robots.txt files are also read separately for each protocol and hostname." _So:

1. Add all 4 existing variants as Fede and GWT guys mentioned above.. and as have you have done already..
2. .. but also: set your preferred domain to be https://www..
3. .. and finally: don't forget to set your canonical URL-s to be https://www.. on all pages

**My solution if the above doesn't work: thinking out of the box — have you connected the the preferred domain, https://www... with your Google Analytics property for the https://.. site? **

What Google writes in their official documentation seems to imply that your GA and GWT site share information between each other. Among other things, for search queries. Now for that to happen successfully both of them must establish in their algorithms what is the real preferred domain / site where the queries go right? Maybe that will force GWT to work.

Reference: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1120006?hl=en

Final risky way too force GWT to track your preferred domain (at least the main page and it's direct descendants of your site):

1. 301 redirect all your http:// to https://  See for example with htaccess, if you are running Apache and not Nginx: https://sites.google.com/site/onlyvalidation/page/301-redirect-https-to-http-on-apache-server
2. For your http://.. site in Google Webmaster Tools user interface under "Crawl" go to "Fetch as Google". Leave the URL field blank to fetch your main index or homepage and click on Fetch for it to fetch for http://.. main index.
3. After it has fetched your http:// homepage and displayed an icon with the word "Redirected" — you can click on the "Submit to Index" button that appears next to the "Redirected" sign and from there choose "Crawl this URL and it's direct descendants" — that may result in Google Webmaster Tools knowing that you really want your preferred domain to be tracked.

I offer this solution only as a thought experiment and because it seems you have replaced your http:// site completely with the https:// version.

[FedeEinhorn]

When you make the switch and "unplug the plug" from the new site to plug it in the new site, they are basically different sites to Google, so you need a new GWT site for the https version (you also need the www and non-www. versions, and wouldn't hurt to have both for both https and http.

What you are seeing now, is Google reindexing your content. Totally normal. It takes a while while Google removed all your HTTP pages and add the HTTPS pages to their index, there's nothing you need to worry about.

Do the other variant verifications and submit a new sitemap with the HTTPS pages to the version that is now being indexed.

I did about 7 switches so far and all went well with exactly the same pattern. Impressions start dropping on the HTTP while increasing in HTTPS (takes longer to start showing numbers in the HTTPS than what it takes for the HTTP to lower those).

Hope that helps!