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
-
Third part http links on the page source: Social engineering content warning from Google
Hi, We have received "Social engineering content" warning from Google and one of our important page and it's internal pages have been flagged as "Deceptive site ahead". We wonder what's the reason behind this as Google didn't point exactly to the specific part of the page which made us look so to the Google. We don't employ any such content on the page and the content is same for many months. As our site is WP hosted, we used a WordPress plugin for this page's layout which injected 2 http (non-https) links in our page code. We suspect if this is the reason behind this? Any ideas? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
HTTPS to HTTP in India
I had a question with reference to https protocol. We are planning to shift from HTTPs to HTTP version of the website will it provide any significant advantage in ranking better in Google. This question is specific to Google India and that too in a competitive landscape such as Finance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | glitterbug0 -
Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?
Hi Mozzers, I have a new client who has some bad links in their profile that are spammy and should be disavowed. They rank on the first page for some longer tail keywords. However, we're aiming at shorter, well-known keywords where they aren't ranking. Will the disavow tool, alone, have the ability to increase rankings (assuming on-site / off-site signals are better than competition)? Thanks, Cole
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Can a domain name alone be considered SPAM?
If someone has a domain that is spammy, such as "http://seattlesbestinsurancerates.com" can this cause Google to not index the website? This is not our domain, but a customer of ours has a similar one and it appears to be causing issues! Any thoughts? Thanks for any input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tosten0 -
No Follows - Sister/manufacturer sites
What is the best practice nowadays for linking to sister sites? Should you do it, shouldn't you, and/or should you list them with no follows? What about the reverse - having them link to us. Is this bad for us in anyway? Should we have them no follow their link to us? We are a distributor so manufacturers link to us as well, should we have them no follow their links? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CHECOM0 -
I need to find a website I can get guest blogs on for a removal website.
Hello everyone, I need to find a website I can guess blog posts on. Please can someone tell me where I need to look and how the process works: E.g Do i email the blogger saying I'll pay him? Also what categories would work well for removal website. www.van-plus.com to be precise. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vanplus1 -
Can a "Trusted Retailer" badge scheme affect us in the SERPs?
Hi Guys, In the last week our website saw a drop on some of our biggest and best converting keywords and we think it might be down to us rolling out a “Trusted Retailer” badge scheme. We sell our products directly to consumers via our website, but we also sell our products to other online resellers. We think badges are a good to show the consumer that we trust a site. On the 17th September we sent out badges to about 39 of our best retailers, two of whom have already put them on their sites. Instead of sending them a flat jpeg, we sent them HTML files containing code that pulled in the image from our servers. We wanted to host the image to make sure that we always had some leverage. So if a company stopped selling our products, or the quality of their site went down, we could just remove the badge. Whilst at it, we stuck a link in there pointing to an FAQ on our website all about trusted retailers and what people need to look out for. We chose the anchor text “(brand name) Trusted Retailer”, because that seemed to be the most relevant. The code looks like this: (our brand) Trusted Retailer You might notice that there is a div just before the link. This is there to stop the user from clicking on the top 65% of the badge (because this contains the shop name and ID number), and we also used a negative text-indent to move the anchor text out of the way. But right underneath this is our Logo, so it’s almost a hidden link, but you can still click it. So far the badge has been put in on two sites, one of which isn’t so great and maybe looks a tiny bit spammy. (They sell mostly through ebay as opposed to on their main site). Also, these sites seem to have put it on most of their pages! So my questions are; Is this seen as black or grey hat? Is it the fact we put in anchor text with our brand? Or is it the fact the url is transparent in the coding? Or is it the fact the sites are using sitewide links? In any case would Google react so quickly as to penalise us in two days? If this is the issue, do you think there’s anything we can do to stop getting penalised? (Other than having to e-mail 39 retailers back and getting them to take the badges down). Thoughts much appreciated – we do our SEO in-house and are still learning every day… Thank you James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | OptiBacUK0 -
Can a Page Title be all UPPER CASE?
My clients wants to use UPPER CASE for all his page titles. Is this okay? Does Google react badly to this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | petewinter0