Q: Post-migration we were live on both www and non-www — how much was that hurting?

Q: Post-migration we were live on both www and non-www — how much was that hurting?

Classic split, easy money to fix.

Short answer: it halved your signals and confused canonicalization.

Long answer: a launch served both www and non-www with 200 status — no redirect between them. Google indexed both, splitting links and treating them as duplicates. GSC showed two sets of the same pages and "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical" on ~1,200 URLs. Rankings were volatile, bouncing between versions.

We picked www, 301-ed non-www to it sitewide, set the canonical, and updated internal links. The duplicate bucket cleared in 3 weeks, ranking volatility stopped, and traffic rose 9% as signals consolidated onto one version.

Next step: type both www and non-www of your homepage — one MUST 301 to the other. If both load with 200, that's your fix.