Changed url from non www to www...Google Indexing

Question

I have recently changed (about 1 week ago) my url from non www version to www version.

I told my hosting company to do this and they did it successfully all my urls are directed to www version. But google is indexing my non www version on the search results. I have updated new content on my website and google indexes that content with the changed url i.e with prefix www but the mainpage i.e the site name is still shown without www and its not updated. I have checked that my www.sitename.com is listed on google but not shown when I type www.sitename.com. So how much time does it take to remove the old urls from indexing and updating into new urls ??????

Answer 1

A better answer would be to use Google Webmaster Tools to use the www. version instead of the non-www version. Or use perm redirects to tell robots that your page URL's have changed. That way you will transfer the page ranks from the old pages to the new without loss. Otherwise your new pages will start with a zero page rank.

When we made this same change it took 3 months before we started to see positive search results.

Answer 2

It takes quite a while for Google to remove all your old pages and re-index the www version. You should create a new sitemap file submit it to Google webmaster tools and delete the old one. Also make sure the re-writes from non-www to www are correct and setup new canonical tags.