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This is surely obvious but I can't find clear instructions on this. I've probably read 20 articles and downloaded the AIOSEO browser extension.

We have an HTML website with one single page named index.html

Google search console has decided that the version with the www should be indexed. - https://www.kerrvilletexashillcountrypostcards.com/

We would like the non www version to be indexed, but can't find where to set this in Google Search Console anymore.

Our sitemap.xml file includes this: <loc>https://kerrvilletexashillcountrypostcards.com/</loc>

Our index.html file says this: <link rel="canonical" href="https://kerrvilletexashillcountrypostcards.com/" />

Our .htaccess file says this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.kerrvilletexashillcountrypostcards.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://kerrvilletexashillcountrypostcards.com/$1 [L,R=301]

And we are not using a robots.txt since there's only one page.

We've submitted our sitemap to Google.

What else do we need to do?

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  • How long since you first created your site? How long have your sitemap, canonical, and redirect been in place?
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Feb 28 at 11:35
  • We first created the site about a month ago. It showed up on the first page pretty quickly and then dropped off. I resubmitted the sitemap and request to index about 48 hours ago.
    – OSP
    Commented Feb 29 at 3:12
  • You need to wait at least two weeks for any changes you make to get applied.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Feb 29 at 10:13
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    Showing up on the first page and then dropping of is pretty normal for Google. Google likes to "taste" new content with high ranking. i think they do this to gather data about how users react to it.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Feb 29 at 10:15

2 Answers 2

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This had happened to me before. So you can fix it using canonical tag, you can include the canonical tag in the webpage that you want to index. in your case, it is the non-www.version of the webpage. You can include the canonical tag under section of your webpage. here’s the canonical tag hope it helps, replace the link of yours page that you want to index

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/html">

After adding the canonical tag resubmit your webpage for indexing on Google search console after few weeks, days or maybe hours it will be fixed

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  • They say they are already using a canonical tag
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Feb 28 at 11:34
  • Yes, we are using canonical. When i look at your tag it has not ending / before the >. Ours didn't either at first but i thought maybe this was the problem so i added it. Maybe it's just not been enough time. If no one sees a problem with our code, above. Then, I guess we just wait.
    – OSP
    Commented Feb 28 at 16:00
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Google indicates it cached the www version on 21 Feb 2024 and it had a canonical to the www.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://kerrvilletexashillcountrypostcards.com

At the moment, it is canonicalising the non-www to the www.

All looks good on your side now, so I guess wait.

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