Can I leave off HTTP/HTTPS in a canonical tag?
-
We are working on moving our site to HTTPS and I was asked by my dev team if it is required to declare HTTP or HTTPS in the canonical tag? I know that relative URL's are acceptable but cannot find anything about HTTP/HTTPS.
Example of what they would like to do
Has anyone done this?
Any reason to not leave off the protocol?
-
Very good to hear, thanks Shawn! The goal is to use absolute canonicals, but for a period of time, we may have to use protocol relative. The redirects in place should avoid any duplicate content issues, which seems to be the big landmine.
-
That's good to know. Thanks for the update Shawn.
Since the initial discussion took place several Google reps. have publicly stated that there is no PageRank loss between redirects and rel ="canonical" tags. This seems to substantiate their claim.
The biggest issue with these is when giving conflicting instructions to user agents, such as a redirect to a page that rel canonicals back to the URL from which it was redirected, thus closing an infinite loop. For example, if you redirected from HTTP to HTTPS, but then the HTTPS version had a rel ="canonical" tag that was hard-coded to the HTTP version.
The above issue doesn't apply because you're redirecting from HTTP to HTTPs, which shows a relative path rel canonical tag for the HTTPs domain.
-
Now that our entire site is HTTPS, there does not seem to be any negative impact to our URL's by leaving off the HTTP protocol. If there was any traffic lost, it didn't seem significant as our reports did not indicate a decline. One year later, traffic through SEO is higher than before we implemented.
I personally agree with Everett, don't leave things to chance. I did require that the homepage did have HTTPS for the canonical though. I felt massive panic attacks while we were going through the transition. However, if you are unable to convince your developers the importance of using an absolute path for canonical this did not seem to have a negative impact on our site.
I am glad that we didn't have any noticeable impact, but I am also glad that I didn't turn it into a bigger issue within our leadership team. Since we didn't see anything negative, it could've reduced my credibility within the business which would've had made it difficult for larger SEO problems.
BTW, we are still using relative canonical tags today. (except the homepage, that still has HTTPS)
-
Hey Shawn, did using an unspecified HTTP/HTTPS protocol work for you in the canonical and/or HREF-LANG? We are going through a transition to HTTPS as well, and have multiple systems with some URLs that are hard coded. Hoping this solution would work as a short-term fix, while we update these pages to use a new, more dynamic system.
-
Shawn,
My advice would be to canonical everything to the HTTPS version using an absolute path. That would be the best practice. I understand that is not what you're doing and you aren't getting any errors, but site-wide use of rel canonicals is something that can do more harm than good if a search engine misinterprets what you're trying to accomplish.
Either way, good luck and keep us posted.
-
No worries Shawn. I also hope it doesn't cause issues down the line. Everything in me is screaming "Don't do it!"
Best of luck.
-Andy
-
I know, and that's what sucks. It appears to work, but goes against what seems to be best practice and since I cannot find other instances to state one or the other it's hard not to follow their logic.
I just hope it doesn't screw up everything in the end. Thanks for the discussion.
-
Well, if it works (which I didn't think it would!) then I guess that answers one question - and I ran that page through Screaming Frog just to confirm there are no issues and it does indeed canonical back to the https version of the page.
I just can't get out of the mindset that the format looks wrong. I haven't seen other instances of it done that way, and like you, have no documentation to suggest issues that might be caused.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
-Andy
-
Thanks Andy, I posted a reply to the other response that ties into your comment here. On the page I listed above, there are not errors if I use HTTPS and the canonical doesn't declare anything. We have SSL certs, just haven't made the big switch yet.
-
Thanks for the answers, all of which I've passed on to them.
They have attempted this on a page and have not seen any errors or issues as of yet which is problematic for me in the sense of if I cannot show where any issue results by them taking shortcuts, they will not necessarily listen to my feedback.
Here is the URL that they have left off the protocol in the canonical
http://www.alaskaair.com/content/deals/flights/cheapest-flights-to-hawaii.aspx.
I use the Chrome extension Canonical which doesn't give me the icon indicating that I am not viewing the preferred URL. When I use HTTPS and view source it looks the same as it does with HTTP. Sometimes there are parameters in the URL like ?INT=AS_HomePage_-prodID:SEO and even with HTTP missing from the canonical it still seems to work.
Since I cannot find any documentation against doing it this way I am getting strong resistance to declaring HTTP and then going back at some point when it moves to HTTPS and updating. Like I've stated above, they are using this for links and assets on the site since our site moves back and forth between HTTPS and HTTP depending on what the customer is doing and they have found leaving off the protocol it makes their life easier and limits the errors that Andy below mentions.
https://www.alaskaair.com/content/deals/flights/cheapest-flights-to-hawaii.aspx
-
Hi again
To be clear, I think this would populate http://www.domain.com//www.domain.com as the where the canonical should be attributed to.
Hope this makes a bite more sense. Good luck!
-
Example of what they would like to do
That would be a no-no Shawn. If you are running over SSL, then you need to canonical back to the https version of the page. If you don't, you will end up with errors on the page (yellow warning triangle) and trust issues with Google. What they would like to do is canonical to a malformed URL which it could interpret as a file.
Try going to any URL and just entering it as //www.domain.com
-Andy
-
Hi there
According to Google...
Avoid errors**:** use absolute paths rather than relative paths with the
rel="canonical"
link element. However, they then say (under "Prefer HTTPS over HTTP for canonical URLs)...
Google prefers HTTPS pages over equivalent HTTP pages as canonical, except when there are conflicting signals such as the following:
- The HTTPS page has an invalid SSL certificate.
- The HTTPS page contains insecure dependencies.
- The HTTPS page is roboted (and the HTTP page is not).
- The HTTPS page redirects users to or through an HTTP page.
- The HTTPS page has a
rel="canonical"
link to the HTTP page. - The HTTPS page contains a
noindex
robots meta tag
Although our systems prefer HTTPS pages over HTTP pages by default, you can ensure this behavior by taking any of the following actions:
- Add 301 or 302 redirects from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page.
- Add a
rel="canonical"
link from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page. - Implement HSTS.
To prevent Google from incorrectly making the HTTP page canonical, you should avoid the following practices:
- Bad SSL certificates and HTTPS-to-HTTP redirects cause us to prefer HTTP very strongly. Implementing HSTS cannot override this strong preference.
- Including the HTTP page in your sitemap or hreflang entries rather than the HTTPS version.
- Implementing your SSL/TLS certificafe for the wrong host-variant: for example, example.com serving the certificate for www.example.com. The certificate must match your complete site URL, or be a wildcard certificate that can be used for multiple subdomains on a domain.
Since I don't know how your SSL is configured, I can't tell you one way or another, but if you have a https version of your pages, then head that direction. Having a relative protocol won't seem to work here for what you're asking.
Read the above and let me know if that helps! Good luck!
-
I did read that before I asked, it didn't really answer my question. I understand that relative URL's work, but leaving off the protocol declaration isn't relative it just leaves it up to the server to provide whether the site is secure or not.
Since we use multiple systems across our site, there isn't an easy way to implement relative or absolute canonical tags which is why the dev's want to know if they can implement without HTTP/HTTPS. They like to do this with assets on the site and have started to code links in a similar manner. What I can't determine is if this will cause issues.
-
Hi there
According to Google, they want you to either use relative URLs or use absolute URLs. You can read more here.
I recommend reading this so you can see the types of common mistakes they find and how to resolve those.
Good luck!
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
-
Inbound Links - Redirect, Leave Alone, etc
Hi, I recently download the inbound links report for my client to look for some opportunities. When they switched to our platform a couple years ago, the format of some of their webpages change, so a number of these inbound links are going to an error page and should be redirected. However, some of these are spammy. In that case, someone recommended to me to disavow them but still redirect anyway. In other cases, some were "last seen" a year or two ago, so when I try to go to the URL the link is coming from, I also get an error page. Should I bother to redirect in these cases? Should I disavow in both cases? Or leave them alone? Thanks for any input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac261 -
I want to rank with this page http://www.servicesarab.com/%D9%86%D9%82%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%81%D8%B4-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%AA/
i want to rank with this page http://www.servicesarab.com/%D9%86%D9%82%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%81%D8%B4-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%AA/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | saharali150 -
Canonical cross domain Linkjuice
I know that back few years ago, rel=canonical used on cross-domain was passing link juice. As I've read based on many experts (case studies), the canonical cross-domain was working like implementing a 301. Is it still the case ? Does anyone tried to implement it recently and it worked ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | manoman880 -
Can a Self-Hosted Ping Tool Hurt Your IP?
Confusing title I know, but let me explain. We are in the middle of programming a lot of SEO "action" tools for our site. These will be available for users to help better optimize their sites in SERPs. We were thinking about adding a "Ping" tool based in PHP so users can ping their domain and hopefully get some extra attention/speed up indexing of updates. This would be hosted on a subdomain of our site. My question is: If we get enough users using the product, could that potentially get us blacklisted with Google, Bing etc? Technically it needs to send out the Ping request, and that would be coming from the same IP address that our main site is hosted on. If we end up getting over a 1000 users all trying to send ping requests I don't want to potentially jeopardize our IP. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley0 -
Title Tag : use comma, pipe or colon (:)
Hi, If Title has two and three keywords then which one is better option to separate them either with comma or pipe or colon. Example : Arvixe Review, Coupons (Jun 2015) and Uptime Report (I used (,) as a separator) Arvixe Review is primary keywords and Coupons and Uptime are secondary keywords. Aim is rank on keywords like Arvixe Review, Arvixe Coupons and Arvixe Uptime.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gamesecure
Also, including current month and year with Title tag and it will change every month. Its means every month our title is changed.
Is this effect in SEO? Suggest best possible title for keywords like Arvixe Review, Coupons (Jun 2015) and Uptime Report. Rajiv0 -
Can one business operate under more than one website?
Is it possible for a business to rank organically for the same keyword multiple times with different web addresses? Say if I sell car keys and I wanted to rank for "buy new car keys" and I set up two different website say ibuycarkeys.com and carkeycity.com and then operate under both of these, would Google frown upon this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | steve2150 -
IS http://ezinearticles.com/ good or bad for backlinks?
Hi Everyone, Is http://ezinearticles.com/ any good to use? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vanplus0 -
"Unnatural Linking" Warning/Penalty - Anyone's company help with overcoming this?
I have a few sites where I didn't manage the quality of my vendors and now am staring at some GWT warnings for unnatural linking. I'm assuming a penalty is coming down the pipe and unfortunately these aren't my sites so looking to get on the ball with unwinding anything we can as soon as possible. Does anyone's company have experience or could pass along a reference to another company who successfully dealt with these issues? A few items coming to mind include solid and speedy processes to removing offending links, and properly dealing with the resubmission request?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | b2bmarketer0