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After the recent announcement by Google that was speculated for a while in the SEO community, that sites that load over https (ssl) will be weighted slightly higher in the search algorithms, I quickly implemented an SSL cert and configured my dedicated server to serve the entire site/forum via https. Any old http links (in backlinks or Google's index) are 301 redirected to the https link.

Traffic hasn't declined, but my graph of search queries faded to zero pretty quickly after this change.

So any idea why this has happened?

Thanks.

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You need to add a new site on Google Webmaster Tools and set the domain as https://example.com all the data is being collected there instead.

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  • That sounds exactly like the correct answer! Thanks. I'll go do that. I'll accept the answer when I've confirmed this fixes the problem. As so it can be useful to others. :) – i-CONICA Aug 29 '14 at 10:37
  • Just added the new site, and you're 100% correct. Where the data tails off from the http site in WMT, the https data picks up, all present and correct. I wouldn't have thought Google would consider a change of protocol to be a different site... Differing port, subdomain or tld obviously, but protocol?... Thanks anyway.. – i-CONICA Aug 29 '14 at 10:41
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    https is different port compared to http. And there is no technical reason why there couldn't be completely different content between http / https versions. – Tero Kilkanen Aug 29 '14 at 12:59
  • You're right. 443 vs 80. Doh! – i-CONICA Aug 29 '14 at 14:16

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