Authority site drastic ranking drop after google https switch. Please Help!
-
Hi Mozers.
Since Google switched to the https version, our company website (http://we.register.it) indexing switched to the https version (https://www.register.it).
After that the ranking on Google dropped for almost every keyword.
The site is very old and got a great authority and PR 7. It ranked for same keywords for very long time
On each page from years there is the correct meta rel canonical. No spam, and WMT is ok.
Could you please help?
- The internal links are all in http, and in https. If you are https are in https (they are all relatives)
- No changes have been made and the subdomain is in that way from 8 years: the main url has always been http://we.register.it
- Google started this indexing switch around the 15 October
-
Hey Luca
Weird, a similar issue just happened to a friend's site here locally.
To clarify, http pages are still indexed if you search - site:https://www.register.it/ -inurl:https -- but it's just that both http AND https are indexed now.
Also - I don't see we.register.it loading at all - only www.register.it --- was this recently changed? Although I am seeing both we and www indexed in Google. Did we always redirect to www?
Since the HTTPS is redirecting now to HTTP Google will not be able to see the canonical. Here's what I think you should try;
- Undo the 301 redirect from https to http
- In your HTTPS robots.txt file, block crawling
- Register HTTPS in webmaster tools (if not already) and do a URL removal on all the pages you don't want indexed from HTTPS (probably all of them)
- I would strongly recommend sorting out your internal linking using absolute URL paths and ONLY link to pages with HTTPS when they actually are really HTTPS pages. Otherwise links to HTTP.
- Sort out your we vs. www subdomain issue.
This is honestly a slightly involved situation, where we can give cursory advice here, but just want to be transparent that if you're not completely comfortable in what to do, you might want to find someone who can peek behind the curtain (unfortunately as Moz Associates we're not able to log into your accounts or anything).
EDIT: just want to add that you should be sure you have updated and working XML sitemaps for the http and subdomain you want indexed, and they are submitted to WMT
-
No problem Federico.
I do have checked and there aren't any warnings in WMT. Everything looks right!It's very weird that google ranked http://we.register.it in top position for top keywords and since few days google started to index https version (ignored until then). Google first moved all ranking to https version keeping exact same positions and then started to drop everything down.
Any idea?
-
Oh yes, sorry Luca, I thought you were serving different canonicals in each version pointing to itself. The way you have them set is right.
I don't think this is the reason you are seeing the ranking or traffic drop, as actually using the canonicals the right way (the way you are) should avoid any duplicate content issue. But you better cover all the bases and fix everything that could be the reason.
By the way, did you check the manual actions sections in WMT?
-
Hi Federico,
What you are saying about the duplicate issue is definitely right intact we have already planned to 301 redirect one or the other protocol version (http 301 to https or viceversa). Anyway it's very weird that google is realizing this after about 10 years.
Anyway It's not clear to me how Canonicalization it makes it worse.
On the https://www.register.it page there is the following canonicalThis means that we are saying to google that the right page to index is http://we.register.it/ and https://www.register.it is a duplicate of http://we.register.it (which is the page was actually ranking until few days ago).
Am I wrong?Thanks
Luca -
As far as I understand, having both versions of the page HTTP and HTTPS can cause duplicate content issues. Serving pages under both protocols creates 2 pages of each page for search engines, even if the content is the same.
Canonicalization here even makes it worth, as you are actually telling engines to index both as different while they are actually the same.
You need to go with one or the other. Given the common choice and your type of business, I would choose HTTPS and 301redirect ALL HTTP pages to their HTTPS. That can be done with a single PHP line of code (if you are under PHP).
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
-
Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags
Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L
Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright1 -
Please who can help me rank my website www.shopdocuments.com ?
Hi , i bought my website this month , i built it myself now i want it to grow seo on google pages and stuff tried google ads but they always block my account don't know why so somebody help me please any company? individual willing to work it for me ? even if paid company no problem
Technical SEO | | planetdocs1 -
What steps can you take to help a site that does not change
Hi, i am working on a product and services website www.clairehegarty.co.uk but the problem i have is, the site does not really change. The home page stays the same and the only time it changes is when a new course is advertised. The most important page on the website is http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy but we have seen the site drop in rankings because the page is not being updated. This page has all the information you could want on weight loss but we have seen the page drop from number one in google to number four. I would like to know what steps we should take to increase our rankings in google and would be grateful for your suggestions. If i put in articles on the site, had a section where we put a new article every week, would this then get google to visit the whole site more and move our pages back up the rankings, or should we be looking at doing other things.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Google indexing tags help
Hey everyone, So yesterday someone pointed out to me that Google is indexing tags and that will likely hurt search engine results. I just did a "site:thetechblock.com" and I notice that tags are still being pulled. http://d.pr/i/WmE6 Today, I went into my Yoast settings and checked "noindex,follow" tags in the Taxomomies settings. I just want to make sure what I'm doing is right. http://d.pr/i/zmbd Thanks guys
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Syndication partner ranking in Google News for our content
Our blog is part of Google News and is syndicated for use by several of our partners such as Chicago Tribune. Lately, we see the syndicator version of the post appearing in Google News instead of our original version. Ours generally ranks in the regular index. ChiTrib does have canonical URL tags and syndication-source tags pointing to our original. They are meta tags, not link tags. We do have a News-specific sitemap that is being reported in WMT as error-free. However, it shows no urls indexed in the News module -- even when I can find those specific URLs (our version) in the News. For an example: Here is a ChiTrib post currently ranking in Google News
Technical SEO | | CarsProduction
http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/sns-school-carpool-lanes-are-a-danger-zone-20120301,0,3514283.story The original version is here:
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/03/school-carpool-lanes-are-a-danger-zone.html The News sitemap URL is
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/kickingtires_newsmap.xml One of our front-end producers is speculating that the Facebook sharing code on ChiTrib is having an effect. Given that FB is FB and Google is Google, that sounds wrong to me when we're talking about specifically Google News. Any suggestions? Thanks.0 -
Google is indexing proxy (mirror) site.
We moved the site to a new hosting. Previously the site used Godaddy Windows Hosting with white domain masking. After moving the site we just mirrored the site. We have to use mirrored domain for PPC campaigns because it mirrored site contains true BRAND name and there is better conversion with that domain plus all trade marked keywords are approved for mirrored domain. Robots.txt User-agent: * Host: www.hermitagejewelers.com Disallow: /Bin Disallow: /css www.hermitagejewelers.com is the main domain. Mirror site is www.ermitagejewelers.com (Without the "H" at the beginning) Most of the keywords are now picked up by mirror site. I have not noticed any major changes in ranking except that it ranks for mirror site. We updated the sitemap. Website is designed very poorly (not by us). Also, we submitted the change address request for ermitagejewelers to hermitagejewelers in webmasters. Please let me know any advice to fix that problem. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | MaxRuso1 -
Is there any evidence that using Google Site Search will help your ranking, speed of indexing, or traffic?
I am considering using Google Site Search on our new site. I was told... "We have also seen a bump in traffic for sites when using Google Site Search because Google indexes the site more often (they claim using the paid Google Site Search has no effect on search rankings but we have also seen bumps in rankings after using it so that may just be what they have to say legally)." Is there any evidence of this? Would you recommend using Google Site Search? Thanks David
Technical SEO | | DavidButler710 -
Google +1 Button on Flash sites
One of my customers is willing to add Google +1 button on their Flash websites. Is it possible? How can we add Google +1 button on a Flash site? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | merkal20050