This is more an SEO question and it relates to my first forum which has been running a few years and doing well. I stopped bothering to use Google Analtics and search console quite some time ago. I have another forum as well but with this first one I hadn't a clue what I was doing when I first set it up (it's been a learning curve) and that's now coming back to bite me.
So I decided to start having adsense ads on it, and set up search console first. So this is where the problem started. The results in search console were good but when I pasted the odd url to be checked, it kept coming up it was a duplicate so couldn't be registered.
Turns out Google has the canonical url as https only without the www. And all my forum links are with the www.
So I should have left well alone but my attempts to get the www links searched/inspected started causing issues and I was trying to find out how to change Google's selected canonical url.
Found it was because I had the https: only set in the board so I changed it to the one with www in the board. The result of that means google now says neither are the canonical url and all my results have gone from search console.
I did have a good placement on google on the first page (which I know notice was an https only link) but none of the other pages come up because they were all www links.
So firstly I have probably messed up my google rankings, secondly I don't seem to have a canonical url now and nothing is being indexed at all in search console and thirdly adsense isn't actually placing under ads (stuck at "not ready" or something) - presumably because it sees issues with the site.
I had just set up search console and adsense for my second forum without a hitch so seems it's an issue with the canonical url's and indexing. I've now changed the board index back to https only. And not sure what to do now!
So I decided to start having adsense ads on it, and set up search console first. So this is where the problem started. The results in search console were good but when I pasted the odd url to be checked, it kept coming up it was a duplicate so couldn't be registered.
Turns out Google has the canonical url as https only without the www. And all my forum links are with the www.
So I should have left well alone but my attempts to get the www links searched/inspected started causing issues and I was trying to find out how to change Google's selected canonical url.
Found it was because I had the https: only set in the board so I changed it to the one with www in the board. The result of that means google now says neither are the canonical url and all my results have gone from search console.
I did have a good placement on google on the first page (which I know notice was an https only link) but none of the other pages come up because they were all www links.
So firstly I have probably messed up my google rankings, secondly I don't seem to have a canonical url now and nothing is being indexed at all in search console and thirdly adsense isn't actually placing under ads (stuck at "not ready" or something) - presumably because it sees issues with the site.
I had just set up search console and adsense for my second forum without a hitch so seems it's an issue with the canonical url's and indexing. I've now changed the board index back to https only. And not sure what to do now!