Https indexed...how?
-
Hello Moz,
Since a while i am struggling with a SEO case:
At the moment a https version of a homepage of a client of us is indexed in Google. Thats really strange because the url is redirected to an other website url for three weeks now. And we did everything to make clear to google that he has to index the other url.
So we have a few homepage urlsA https://www.website.nl
B https://www.websites.nl/category
C http://www.websites.nl/categoryWhat we did:
- Redirected A with a 301 to B, a redirect from A or B to C is difficult because of the security issue with the ssl certificate.
- We put the right canonical url (VERSION C) on every version of the homepage(A,B)
- We only put the canonical urls in the sitemap.xml, only version C and uploaded it to Google Webmastertools
- We changed all important internal links to Version C
- We also get some valuable external backlinks to Version C
Is there something i missed or i forget to say to Google hey look you've got the wrong url indexed, you have to index version C?
How is it possible Google still prefers Version A after doing al those changes three weeks a go?
I'am really looking forward to your answer.
Thanks a lot in advanced!
Greetz
Djacko
-
Sorry for my late respons.
We have decided to go over on https for the whole website that was the best thing to do. The results are good and Google is also happy because there is just one kind of a url we are using within the whole website.
We prefer the short url version and that worktout good.
Greetings
Jacco
-
Hey Djacko: Has Google figured it out? Is the right version of your page indexed now?
-
Hi Rickus,
Thanks for your answer. I agree its still a little bit confusing for Google wich url is the homepage url. We also discovered they have normal links pointing to https urls. So the intern linkstructure is not so good as well.
We will wait a little longer for Google to react on the 301 redirect. We were thinking if he still prefer the https version A, to change all urls in https urls and make an new sitemap with https urls as canonicals and redirect all http urls to https versions. I think Google prefer more often https versions of websites.
Whats your opinion about that?
Thanks a lot!
Djacko
-
Hi there Djacko,
You redirected A to B but could not redirect A or B to C, So that means google is still not to sure of which one is the correct url. And switching from https to http is telling google you have a new domain.
So don't stress to much just make sure that your http://www.homepage.nl and the https://www.homepage.nl has the same work and SEO done on them and give google time to realise whats happend to you site.
In personal experience a 301 redirect always takes the longer to be crawled and updated and in this case its your homepage (domain).
Hope this helps and 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
-
Canonical Tags Before HTTPS MIgration
Hi Guys I previously asked a question that was helpfully answered on this forum, but I have just one last question to ask. I'm migrating a site tomorrow from http to https. My one question is that it was mentioned that I may need to "add canonical tags to the http pages, pointing to their https equivalent prior to putting the server level redirect in place. This is to ensure that you won't be causing yourself issues if the redirect fails for any reason." This is an e-commerce site with a number of links, is there a quick way of doing this? Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ruislip180 -
Homepage not indexed - seems to defy explanation
Hey folks Hoping to get some more eyes on a specific problem I am seeing with a clients site. Site: http:www.ukjuicers.com We have checked everything we can think of and the usual suspects here are not present: Canonical URL is in place Site is shown as indexed in search console No Crawl, DNS, Connectivity or server errors No robots.txt blocking - verified in search console No robots meta tags or directives Fetch as Google works Fetch & render works site command returns all other pages info command does not return the homepage homepage is cached and cache has been updated since this issue started: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ukjuicers.com homepage is indexed in yahoo and Bing all variations redirect to the www.ukjuicers.com domain (.co.uk, .com, www, sans www etc) The only issue I found after some extensive digging was some issues with the HTTP and HTTPS versions of the site both being available and both specifying the canonical version as themselves. So, http site used canonicals with http and https site used canonicals with https. So, a conflict there with the canonical exacerbating the problem it is there to solve. The HTTPS site is not indexed though and we have set this up in webmaster tools and now the web developer has set redirects to ensure all versions even the https now 301 redirect to the http://www.ukjuicers.com page so these canonical issues have been ironed out. But... it's still not indexing the homepage. The practical implications of this are quite scary - the site used to be somewhere between 1st and 4th for keywords like 'juicers', 'juicer' etc. Now they are bottom of page 1 or top of page 2 with an internal page. They were jostling with the big boys (amazon, argos, john lewis etc) but now they are right at the bottom of the second page. It's a strange one - i have seen all manor of technical problems over the years but this one seems to defy sensible explanation. The next step is to do a full technical SEO audit of the site but I am always of the opinion that with many eyes all bugs are shallow so if anyone has any input or experience with odd indexation problems like this would love to get your input. Cheers
Technical SEO | | Marcus_Miller
Marcus0 -
Google crawling but not indexing for no apparent reason
Client's site went secure about two months ago and chose root domain as rel canonical (so site redirects to https://rootdomain.com (no "www"). Client is seeing the site recognized and indexed by Google about every 3-5 days and then not indexed until they request a "Fetch". They've been going through this annoying process for about 3 weeks now. Not sure if it's a server issue or a domain issue. They've done work to enhance .htaccess (i.e., the redirects) and robots.txt. If you've encountered this issue and have a recommendation or have a tech site or person resource to recommend, please let me know. Google search engine results are respectable. One option would be to do nothing but then would SERPs start to fall without requesting a new Fetch? Thanks in advance, Alan
Technical SEO | | alankoen1230 -
Image Sitemap Indexing Issue
Hello Folks, I've been running into some strange issues with our XML Sitemaps. The XML Sitemaps won't open on a browser and it throws the following error instead of opening the XML Sitemap. Sample XML Sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gzError - "XML Parsing Error: no element foundLocation: http://www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xmlLine Number 1, Column 1:"2) Image files are not getting indexed. For instance, the sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gz has 6,000 URLs and 6,000 Images. However, only 3,481 URLs and 25 images are getting indexed. The sitemap formatting seems good, but I can't figure out why Google's de-indexing the images and only 50-60% of the URLs are getting indexed. Thank you for your help!
Technical SEO | | CorbisVeer0 -
Secondary Pages Indexed over Primary Page
I have 4 pages for a single product Each of the pages link to the Main page for that product Google is indexing the secondary pages above my preferred landing page How do I fix this?
Technical SEO | | Bucky0 -
What is the best method for indexing blog pages?
I have a client whose blog has hundreds if not thousands of entries. My question is does it help his site if each unique blog entry becomes indexed on Google? Can we do this dynamically? And role does the canonical tag play in blog entries if at all? Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | coxen000 -
Continued Lack of Google Indexing
I run a baseball site (http://www.mopupduty.com) that is in a very good link neighbourhood. ESPN, The Score, USA Today, MSG Network, The Toronto Star, Baseball Prospectucs, etc etc. New content has not been getting indexed on Google ever since the last update. Site has no dup content, 100% original. I can't think of any spammy links, we get organic links day after day. In the past Google has indexed the site in minutes. It currently has expanded site links within Google search. Bing & Yahoo index the site in minutes. Are there any quick fixes I can make to increase my chance to get indexed by Google. Or just keep pumping out content and hope to see a change in the upcoming future?
Technical SEO | | mkoster1 -
Is z-indexing a black-hat trick?
I use z-indexing for a floating bar that scrolls vertically along the side of my page. I'm not hiding anything. Is this safe or not?
Technical SEO | | BradBorst0