HTTP to HTTPS Transition, Large Drop in Search Traffic
-
My URL is: https://www.seattlecoffeegear.comWe implemented https across the site on Friday. Saturday and Sunday search traffic was normal/slightly higher than normal (in analytics) and slightly down in GWT. Today, it has dropped significantly in both, to about half of normal search traffic. From everything we can see, we implemented this correctly.
- 301 redirected all http requests to https (and yes, they go to the correct page and not to the homepage )
- Rewrote hardcoded internal links
- Registered/submitted sitemaps from https in Bing and GWT
- Used fetch and render to ensure Google could reach the site and also was redirected appropriately from http to https versions
- Ensured robots.txt does not block https or secure
We also use a CDN (though I don't think that impacts anything) and have had no customer issues with accessing or using the website since the transition.Is there anything else I might be missing that could correlate to a drop in search impressions or is this just a waiting game of a few days to let Google sort through the change we've made and reindex everything (it dropped to 0 indexed for a day and is now up to 1744 of our 2180 pages indexed)?Thank you so much for any input!Kaylie
-
Thank you for the reminder! I believe these have all been switched over, but I'll give it another look to be sure!
Kaylie
-
Important think to remember if you are running AdWords to your site is to make sure that your AdWords also point to the https url.
Also when you create new AdWords add pay attention, as default setting is http.
-
Hmmm, I don't appear to have that icon. Perhaps because sampling is not occurring on my report?
I actually felt that the transition went really well, which is why I was surprised by the data. I have a feeling, however, that I indeed just need to give it a few more days and keep checking the traffic/search information.
I'll keep you posted on how things pan out over the next week or so!
-
For Webmaster Tools, you are only getting partial data from the 27th right now. I'd monitor WT for the first full week post switch and compare your data then.
Also, for Google Analytics, that 4% difference may be due to having only partial data from today. So you may need to wait a bit longer for a more accurate comparison there. That said, 4% difference in traffic isn't alarming for the amount of time you're digging into. You're probably overly sensitive after the switch. I'm sure I'd be.
Once thing you can do in GA is ask for higher precision on the reporting. Click the weird icon next to the graduation cap in the top right and slide the toggle under "Control the number of sessions used to calculate this report" toward Higher Precision.
I'm really interested in your experience because we're mapping out a move to https, too.
-
Thanks for the response!
Sorry about the timeout error. Not sure what happened there either. I have been unable to replicate it.
You were partially right about the dates. So now I am looking at the same time table for Analytics and GWT (21-27) and I see a huge "drop" on the 27th in GWT. However, if I extend GA through today, I see a minor drop on Friday the 26th and then it bumps back up to normal levels. Is there a chance that maybe GWT is reporting search/clicks from part way through the 27th rather than the full day of data, creating a false sense of alarm?
I wanted to see a larger set of data that might tell a more complete story. So, looking in GA, I only see a change of 5% in traffic when comparing the 23rd-29th with the 16th-22nd. That is a 4% decrease in Google organic, but I don't feel like these numbers are the cause for alarm that GWT graphs initially indicate. Thoughts?
Thanks for your input!
Kaylie
-
I get a 504 error when I first tried to load your site (https). Then I loaded the http version, but was redirected to the HTTPS version after some time. Not sure what's going on there. I could not repeat the error.
Also, Webmaster Tools data is about two days delayed. Are you sure you're comparing the same days in both applications? (Not uncommon mistake for me to have made.)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking Drop
hey guys, I know there is always someone here asking this questions, but I have done my fair share of investigation and have not come up with a cause. my ranking dropped from page one to page 2 or 3 last sunday in time span of 4 hours. After that I read that google was updating panda with 4.1, but don't know why I got hit exactly. my competition is all clear and some have even gained rankings, and mine dropped even though my domain and page authority increased as well. any ideas would help. I already checked all the obvious ones (such as spam, links, content, etc)
Technical SEO | | s-s1 -
Https indexed...how?
Hello Moz, Since a while i am struggling with a SEO case: At the moment a https version of a homepage of a client of us is indexed in Google. Thats really strange because the url is redirected to an other website url for three weeks now. And we did everything to make clear to google that he has to index the other url.
Technical SEO | | Searchresult
So we have a few homepage urls A https://www.website.nl
B https://www.websites.nl/category
C http://www.websites.nl/category What we did: Redirected A with a 301 to B, a redirect from A or B to C is difficult because of the security issue with the ssl certificate. We put the right canonical url (VERSION C) on every version of the homepage(A,B) We only put the canonical urls in the sitemap.xml, only version C and uploaded it to Google Webmastertools We changed all important internal links to Version C We also get some valuable external backlinks to Version C Is there something i missed or i forget to say to Google hey look you've got the wrong url indexed, you have to index version C? How is it possible Google still prefers Version A after doing al those changes three weeks a go? I'am really looking forward to your answer. Thanks a lot in advanced! Greetz Djacko0 -
Duplicate website with http & https
I have a website that only in a specific state in the USA we had to add a certificate for it to appear with https. my question is how to prevent from the website to be penalized on duplicate content with the http version on that specific state. please advise. thanks!
Technical SEO | | taly0 -
Https redirect when certificate expired
Hi, How do we 301 an https version of a domain to a page on another website when the security certificate has run out? We have 301 redirected the http version but IT stuck on how to do the expired https. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
What can i do to move my site up the search engines
Hi. my site www.in2town.co.uk is currently number five in google for the search word lifestyle magazine, sometimes it moves to four but for over a year it has not got past four. before we had to do the site from scratch due to a major problem upgrading, we were number one in the search engines and our traffic was around 30% higher than it is now. For the keyword lifestyle news, we are on the fifth page of google and would really like to improve this. I would like to know what i need to do on our home page to try and improve our rankings for these two words. the most important word for us is lifestyle news. any help in my goal to improve our rankings would be great. We have improved our design which we are still working on, and we have upgraded to a bigger dedicated server to improve the speed.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
What caused my huge drop in search ranking?
On February 8th, 2012 my site's non-branded search traffic dropped overnight by over 80%. It appears I've been hit by a Google penalty. I submitted a reconsideration request and one of Google's staff replied letting me know it was NOT a manual penalty. So it's clearly a result of an algorithm. What is the cause? I haven't made significant changes to the website in the previous months do to being out of the country and the holidays. I'm extremely careful not to out source SEO so there is no chance of questionable link building strategies, unless my competitor launched an attack on my site. I've considered these possible causes: Duplicate content - My site had some redundancy from a marketing plan before Google Panda launched. Last month, I removed all duplicate content. Unnatural link building - I've been moving slowly my site, page by page, from adbio.com to bioworldusa.com after a brand change. Perhaps the 301 redirects triggered a flag in Google's algorithm. I've since removed all redirects to see if that will fix the issue. Poor User Experience - I recently upgraded my Drupal CMS and had to change themes. Currently my theme is an ugly, grey theme which may cause a higher than usual bounce rate. I've been trying to compensate by making sure the content is high quality. The penalty affected these website: www.bioworldusa.com (2/8/12) blog.bioworldusa.com (2/8/12) www.adbio.com (2/17/12)
Technical SEO | | bioworld1 -
Sitemap.xml showing up in Google Search
Hello when I do a Google search my sitemap.xml shows up for lots of queries. Does anyone have any advise on this? Should I remove url in Google Webmaster? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Internal website search
Hi, I'd like to index dynamically generated - internal website search pages - to Google. A mod rewrite to make the URL strings friendlier might be one way, but as these pages are created on the fly and effectively don't exist till the search keywords are inputted, is it even possible to index them? thanks
Technical SEO | | richcowley0