HTTP URL hangover after move to HTTPS
-
A clients site was moved to https recently. It's a small site with only 6 pages. One of the pages is to advertise an emergency service.
HTTPS move worked fine. Submitted https to webmaster tools, submitted sitemap. 301 redirects. Rankings preserved. However, a few weeks later doing the site:example.com there are two pages for the emergency service. One says https the other is http. But the http one says the correct SEO title and the https one says an old SEO title. This wasn't expected.
When you click the HTTP URL link it 301 redirects to the HTTPS url and the correct SEO title is displayed in the browser tab.
When you click the HTTPS url link it returns a 200 and the correct SEO title is shown as expected in the browser tab.
Anyone have any idea what is going on? And how to fix? Need to get rid of the HTTP URL but in the site search it contains the correct title. Plus- why is it there anyway?
-
Hey there,
I have actually very similar issue on my website. However, it is obviously quite normal (it takes Google some time to update the data) - check the following thread for some more information about this issue, especially the last answer.
https://moz.com/community/q/301s-being-indexed
Cheers, Martin
-
No, just this one page out of 6. Can you explain what you mean by that and how that would mean one http url is still being indexed?
-
HI,
What could happen here is that Google decided that the current URL is unfortunately not the right relevancy. Have you seen that with one of the other pages on the site?
Martijn.
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
-
Http > https Switch Before Platform Migration?
We are planning a series of large site migrations over the next 12-18 months, moving from one platform to another. It's likely the first will be completed by around Aug this year, with the process running until the back end of 2018. The sites are currently on http, and the plan is to first of all migrate all sites to https in the next couple of months. The concern is that, due to the http>https 301 redirects that will be in place, are we putting ourselves at unnecessary risk by effectively carrying out 2 migrations in the space of a year (in terms of loss of potential authority caused by redirects)? Would we be better to wait, and implement https at point of platform migration instead? Thoughts appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers0 -
HTTP → HTTPS Migration - Both Websites Live Simultaneously
We have a situation where a vendor, who manages a great deal of our websites, is migrating their platform to HTTPS. The problem is that the HTTP & new HTTPS versions will be live simultaneously (in order to give clients time to audit both sites before the hard switch). I know this isn't the way that it should be done, but this is the problem we are facing. My concern was that we would have two websites in the index, so I suggested that they noindex the new HTTPS website until we are ready for the switch. They told me that they would just add cannonicals to the HTTPS that points to the HTTP and when it's time for the switch reverse the cannonicals. Is this a viable approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMSI-SEO0 -
Rel Canonical for HTTP and HTTPS pages
My website has a login that has HTTPS pages. If the visitors doesn't log in they are given an HTTP page that is similar, but slightly different. Should I sure a Rel Canonical for these similar pages and how should that be set up? HTTP to HTTPS version or the other way around? Thank you, Joey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoeyGedgaud1 -
CMS Pages - Multiple URLS (/)
Hi guys, this type of question has been asked a few times before but I couldn't find something that told me what i need so apologies if its a tad repetitive. I use Magento, and have several pages using its CMS. However, it produces 2 URLS for each page with a simple /. For example, website.com/hire
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP
website.com/hire/ I know google treats this as 2 separate pages, which would be the better solution. 1. Write a URL re-write for every CMS page
RewriteRule ^hire$ http://www.website.com/hire/ [R=301,L] (Is this right?) 2. Write a general rewrite rule to always add the /
No idea where to begin with this 3. Add a Canonical tag to the page which i think is possible in magento by adding this to the Custom Design Layout XML option in the page CMS. <action method="addLinkRel"></action> <rel>canonical</rel> <href>http://www.website.com/hire/</href> This would make the /hire/ page self-reference and the /hire page reference the /hire/ page I think. Which one of these solutions is the best and any pointers with the coding would be grand.0 -
Http and https duplicate content?
Hello, This is a quick one or two. 🙂 If I have a page accessible on http and https count as duplicate content? What about external links pointing to my website to the http or https page. Regards, Cornel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Rewriting URL
I'm doing a major URL rewriting on our site to make the URL more SEO friendly as well as more comfortable and intuitive for our users. Our site has a lot of indexed pages, over 250k. So it will take Google a while to reindex everything. I was thinking that when Google Bot encounters the new URLs, it will probably figure out it's duplicate content with the old URL. At least until it recrawls the old URL and get a 301 directing them to the new URL. This will probably lower the ranking of every page being crawled. Am I right to assume this is what will happen? Or is it fine as long as the old URLs get 301 redirect? If it is indeed a problem, what's the best solution? rel="canonical" on every single page maybe? Another approach? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corwin0 -
My URLs are a mess!
Hi all, I am having some SEO done on my website and I have been asked to tidy up my URLs. They show the word 'brand' or 'item' and an ID number in every one. http://www.societyboardshop.co.uk/brand/Girl-Skateboards/153/ http://www.societyboardshop.co.uk/item/Girl%20Skateboards%20Guy%20Mariano%20OG%20Guy%20Skateboards/898/ My developer says that we cannot remove these words as they 'form part of a routing table' for each url. How do I fix these URLs? Many thanks in advance. Paul.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul530 -
Exact keyword URL or not?
Hi all, I have a quick question about the proper use of permalinks. Let's say that I have a website about sports and I want to create an internal page dedicated to shoes. I know that the keyword "shoe" has 15.000 monthly visits, while the keyword "shoes" has 1.000 monthly visits. How do I have to name the internal page? http://www.example.com/shoe or http://www.example.com/shoes (with a final 's')? I would think that by naming the URL http://www.example.com/shoes, the search engine would consider that page for the keywords "shoe" and "shoes", but I am not sure about it. Should I create a URL that only focuses on one specific keyword ("shoe", in this example) or a URL that may encompass more than one keyword ("shoe" and "shoes")? I hope this is clear. Thank you for your time and help. All best, Sal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0