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website dropped by google when I switched to https

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2019.03.16

In September, I switched to SSL on all my websites; doing so killed all the traffic. Here's an image showing the results:

traffic stopped when I enabled SSL

I think it was because I left all of the URL's in my sitemap.xml file (which is used by the search engines) as http://emuu.net/... whereas I was now redirecting everything to https://emuu.net/.... And Google has never caught up. Or perhaps they've downgraded my site as being 100% redirects, which I'm sure is bad news.

I'm using CertBot for the SSL certificates, and I'm wondering if using their option to redirect was a great idea. It looks like CertBot used 301 redirects when it rewrote the configuration. This is the supposedly preferred way of doing things. I'll have to have a shot at fixing this, possibly through use of the Google 'webmaster tools'. But if I can't, maybe this is a sign that I should retire emuu.net.

rand()m quote

The skill of accurate perception is called cynicism by those who don't possess it.

—-Alan Millar