Using root domain rather than www. causing issues in Google Search Console

SubRosa · January 17, 2023, 6:52pm

Hello,

I recently switched from WordPress (GoDaddy) to Webflow (CloudFlare) and since launching the Webflow site on www. (the previous site was on the root domain) I am not seeing any traffic in our Google search console. You can see the image below where the traffic dropped after we made the switch.

When I entered the property with www. before it in Google Search, it has begun to collect data.

I have tried to follow the instructions on Webflow to use Root domain as default, but it doesnt seem to work. I just get the below errors:

It would be nice to keep using root so that I don’t have to rebuild all my search data. This hasn’t appeared to have impacted traffic or SEO in any way, other than what is being shown in Google Search.

Here is my site Read-Only: LINK
(how to share your site Read-Only link)

memetican · January 18, 2023, 2:46am

Your GSC property is probably defined to track https://mysite.com only, and is ignoring https://www.mysite.com.

I’d recreate the GSC property as a “domain property” so that it tracks both.

SubRosa · January 18, 2023, 3:44am

my domain property is on GSC as well as the www. the domain property. the screenshot I shared was the domain property after i moved to web flow.

memetican · January 18, 2023, 4:10am

Do you know what I mean by a “domain property”? It’s a different setup in GSC, and should track all of your subdomains together as one property. You wouldn’t have a separate www. property.

Obv I can’t see your GSC setup, but it sounds like you have two site-specific properties.

Also your first screenshot can’t be GSC(?) it contains page views and view durations. Most likely it’s Google Analytics; that’s a different thing, which involves a code embed in your site. You probably forgot to add that in site level code and aren’t tracking any hits as a result.