Indexed pages both www and non-www

Question

I am working on a website redesign. When I uploaded my code in production, I didn't know I must make a redirect between www and non-www URL.

Since I have corrected that problem, Google has indexed both www and non-www URLs.

How can I tell google to unindex all www URLs and only reindex non-www URLs?

Answer 1

As long as you've configured the redirect properly:

1. You don't need to worry about the extra indexed pages, as there are no downsides for you.
2. Google will slowly start removing the redirected pages. Depends on the traffic, this can take long months, from personal experience.
3. As Edward suggested, you may use Google Webmaster Tools to set your preferred domain.

Make sure the redirect pages are 301 (permanent) and not 302 (temporary), you might want to use a redirect checker to make sure.

Good luck with the new design!

Answer 2

Herewith an example config from a working production Apache environment (/etc/httpd/ configuration folder) for PERMANENT (301) URL redirection.

Please note the first will redirect all traffic from http:// to https:// so remove if not needed.

RewriteEngine On

# Force HTTP -> HTTPS redirection on entire domain
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

## Redirect www to non-www permanently - both http and https
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1$1 [R=301,L]