Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS - How long does it take Google to re-index the site?
-
hello Moz
We know that this year, Moz changed its domain to moz.com from www.seomoz.org
however, when you type "site:seomoz.org" you still can find old urls indexed on Google (on page 7 and above)We also changed our site from http://www.example.com to https://www.example.com
And Google is indexing both sites even though we did proper 301 redirection via htaccess.- How long would it take Google to refresh the index? We just don't worry about it?
- Say we redirected our entire site. What is going to happen to those websites that copied and pasted our content? We have already DMCAed their webpages, but making our site https would mean that their website is now more original than our site? Thus, Google assumes that we have copied their site? (Google is very slow on responding to our DMCA complaint)
Thank you in advance for your reply.
-
Unfortunately, the answer is "it depends".
I do have some recent experience with this for 2 very small sites (one has around 300 indexed URL, the other has around 70), which you may find useful.
In each case, it took just a day or two to get the most important URLs (best rankings, traffic, link authority, etc.) swapped in for their non-https counterparts. However, deeper URLs with little link authority took up to 90 days to be swapped out.
If your most important URLs don't get swapped out in a week or so, I would check these things:
- Make sure you've updated internal links so that they point to the https URLs. You don't want to pass your link authority through 301s anyways.
- Make sure all versions of the site are verified in GWT, setting the https version as the preferred version.
- Make sure your sitemaps (XML and HTML) contain the https versions of your URLs
- Make sure that the https URLs do not have the non-https URL's set as the canonical version.
Hope this helps and good luck!
-
Google is super fast when it comes to the main, most important stuff on your domain. It's still indexing stuff from the old SEOmoz.org domain because we have a ton of pages! and frankly, some of them aren't very popular. We also made the decision not to redirect every single page and killed a ton of them. The less popular pages are lingering (though with the right 301 redirects, we're still getting that traffic to the still important to us pages) with SEOmoz.org, either waiting to be indexed at Moz.com or tossed out as they no longer exist.
For dealing with people who are scraping your site, make sure you have canonical tags implemented on your pages for your shiny new https site. Most scrapers steal the code, so they grab those too.
-
Hi there,
Google says in their guidelines: The time it takes Googlebot and our systems to discover and process all URLs in the site move depends on how fast your servers are and how many URLs are involved. As a general rule, a medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move, and larger sites take longer. The speed at which Googlebot and our systems discover and process moved URLs depends the number of URLs and the server speed.
You can find out all the information here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033080?hl=en
Hope it helps you.
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
-
Why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster
Hi, I would like to ask why our website images not indexing in Google. I have shared the following screenshot of the search console. https://www.screencast.com/t/yKoCBT6Q8Upw Last week (Friday 14 Sept 2018) it was showing 23.5K out 31K were submitted and indexed by Google. But now, it is showing only 1K 😞 Can you please let me know why might this happen, why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster.
Technical SEO | | 21centuryweb0 -
Adding https version of website: how best to redirect
If I have 4 versions of my site http://www
Technical SEO | | bhsiao
http://
https://www
https:// What is the best way to redirect without losing seo positions? i have been mainly using http://www but have recently added my ssl so https works also. I heard at Moz Con that I should get the https working. All of my marketing and ads are going to http://www 301 redirect 3 of them? Which 3? If https is becoming important, should that be my main url? will it hurt my seo to switch? Thank you so much in advance!0 -
How long does it take for canonical tags to work
How long on average does it take for a canonical tag to work? Understand that canonicals are just a suggestion, but after adding a canonical tag and submitting the page via Google fetch, assuming Google follows the canonical, would you expect it to work after a day or two or does it take longer? We added canonicals to old PPC landing pages that are ranking organically, though our new landing pages (which we want to rank organically) are not identical and have a bit more content/features. They are similar though. Canonicals were added to the old pages (pointing to new pages) and requested indexing via search console. Old pages are still ranking and new pages not so much. FYI we are unable to 301 old PPC pages due to other non negotiable reasons unfortunately. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?
Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop. Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.
Technical SEO | | zasite0 -
Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google
We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like: www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to? If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seogirl221 -
Robots.txt on http vs. https
We recently changed our domain from http to https. When a user enters any URL on http, there is an global 301 redirect to the same page on https. I cannot find instructions about what to do with robots.txt. Now that https is the canonical version, should I block the http-Version with robots.txt? Strangely, I cannot find a single ressource about this...
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
Why google indexed pages are decreasing?
Hi, my website had around 400 pages indexed but from February, i noticed a huge decrease in indexed numbers and it is continually decreasing. can anyone help me to find out the reason. where i can get solution for that? will it effect my web page ranking ?
Technical SEO | | SierraPCB0 -
How to remove a sub domain from Google Index!
Hello, I have a website having many subdomains having same copy of content i think its harming my SEO for that site since abc and xyz sub domains do have same contents. Thus i require to know i have already deleted required subdomain DNS RECORDS now how to have those pages removed from Google index as well ? The DNS Records no more exists for those subdomains already.
Technical SEO | | anand20100