Http vs Https Related Rankings Drop?
-
I've noticed in a number of keyword ranking tools (Moz included) that our rankings have dropped substantially for a number of our top performing keywords precisely 7 days back. When you view the attached screenshot you'll see there was a drastic drop in the overall organic impressions as well as a drop in keyword rankings.
I also noticed that all the keywords which have dropped in rank now show with the https version of our home page url. I've read up on this and it believe that this should not cause a drop in rankings but we have even added https as a domain in webmaster tools with no improvement. Quite simply, has Google de-indexed our http home page url which was previously tied to our higher rankings for our core keywords? How can we get this back without "disavowing" our https version of the site.
We're not doing anything to game search results so I dont think we're being penalized, simply there is some sort technical glitch taking place between recognizing HTTP vs HTTPS versions of our site.
Our home page is goo.gl/qVPRwf and an example keyword is "wedding ring sets his and hers"
Can anyone recommend further debugging steps or have an understanding of what can be done at this point?
Also, if it helps, I have studied the Help Center, read the FAQs and searched for similar questions with no success.wedding ring sets his and hers
-
Hey Aaron!
Thanks for providing us with this answer, we looked into this direction and found the bug that caused the glitch in how the traffic was being redirected the wrong way. Much appreciated!
-
sorry just wanted to add that I would be doing a disavow of links if you haven't already. You have a lot of spammy looking links.
Have a look at where your links are coming from click here this can also not be helping you too.
-
Just looked at your website you are running both http and https. You will need to setup 301.
See the way it works is http and https are different websites and if you don't set them up right google will see them as different websites. As I'm sure you can understand google just don't understand what is going on and you can have lots of issues going forward.
You also need to make sure you have http going to the right https pages or all links going to the http will not follow on.
Here are the code to put into the site to ensure http 301 to the right https Click here
Also i was just looking at your site and I would remove your business name from titles can be seen a spammy as it has rings in the name. The overuse of keywords in titles can hurt rankings too.
If you want any help just send me a message on here.
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
-
Huge difference in browser and search console rankings: Any latest updates?
Hi, We know that it's common to see some ranking difference in browser and GSC for a keyword. But I can see there is a huge difference from last 3 months. We position at 15 to 20th position when we search in browser (different IPs without signing in to any Google account; where as the rank in GSC varies between 35 around. I wonder if anything changed in the way Google reports and does anybody face the same issue? Is there anything we can do about this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
One day impressions drop... how to figure out why?
I went back and looked through webmaster tools. I had around 3000 impressions per day leading up to 3/10/2014. Then on 3/11/2014, I dropped to 1000 impressions per day. Is there a good way to figure out what happened? Anyone know if there was a google update that day.
Algorithm Updates | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Homepage Index vs Home vs Default?
Should your home page be www.yoursite.com/index.htm or home.htm or default.htm on an apache server? Someone asked me this, and I have no idea. On our wordpress site, I have never even seen this come up, but according to my friend, every homepage HAS to be one of those three. So my question is which one is best for an apache server site AND does it actually have to be one of those three? Thanks, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Organic Traffic dropped 50%. Anyone want to have a stab at why? (URL listed)
Just curious what the pro's on here think is the reason why our site got hammered recently. The URL is www.jobshadow.com. We've got gobs of quality content that had been ranking for quite a few keywords. Even one from Rand himself http://www.jobshadow.com/interview-with-seo-and-seomoz-founder-rand-fishkin/ Rankings for even the exact match domain keyword 'Job Shadow' have been pummeled. Anyway, we've got a pretty solid link profile I would think. We also have a very high user time on the site, thus suggesting the organic traffic was engaged when Google ranked us for those keywords. We have lots of unsolicited inbound links and even recent ones from PBS. I'm not really sure what it takes to please the "machine" at this point. Curious as to what everyone here thinks.
Algorithm Updates | | arkana0 -
Merging Multiple Domains into a Single Domain and Its Effect on Ranking
My client had multiple top-level-domains. Each one represented an insurance program within a specific vertical. For all the sites at these alternate domains, there was a 30/70 mix of duplicate vs. original content. Some of the alternate domains ranked very well for their target keyphrase groups, where others were absent in results pages. We advised the client to merge multiple domains into their existing main domain, for usability and SEO reasons. We recently ran the merger. Here was our process: On the main domain, transfer the content such that it matches 1-for-1 content on the various alternate domains Setup Google Webmaster tools on the main domain Push the new content on the main domain live and submit a corresponding sitemap to Google Establish 301 redirects on the alternate domains, such that each alternate domain URL points to its respective page on the main domain We did this 12 days ago, and pages (previously on the alternate domains) that had ranked well on Google have now plummeted or are entirely non-existent. Did we do the right thing by merging multiple top-level domains into a single domain? Is this initial dip in rankings normal? How soon should we expect to see it return to its normal rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | PinckneyHugoGroup0 -
Google Page Rank?
We have had a quality website for 12 years now, and it seems no matter how many more links we get and how much new content we add daily, we have stayed at PR3 for the past 10 years or so. Our SEOMoz domain authority is 52. We have over 950,000 pages linking to us from 829 unique root domains. Is this in line with PR3 or should we be approaching PR4 soon? We do daily blog posts with all unique, fresh quality content that has not been published elsewhere. We try to do everything with 'white hat' methods, and we are constantly trying to provide genuine content and high quality products, and customer service. How can we improve our PR and how important is PR today?
Algorithm Updates | | applesofgold0 -
Videos increase ranking of products in SERPS from Ecommerce Website
Just noticed something I've never seen before..and I just wanted to see if anyone else experienced this. I work for a 15000+ item eccommerce website, and today I noticed that on a few brand searches, several individual product pages were coming up. This is actually unusual because most of our individual item pages (including these) aren't ranked well enough to show up well in a brand search (and don't try to target brand terms either), but a correlation here was that both items contained videos referenced within. These were not videos hosted on our YouTube brand page either..these were videos done by separate manufacturers - one was hosted on their site, one on ours. Google actually pulled the snapshot of the video to the SERP as well... even though it was embedded within other product copy. Has anyone else noticed any preferential treatment given to effectively random items on your eCommerce website because it was augmented by video? I can assure you there was nothing otherwise unique about these products and they're not really that sought after. Neither item or url was new, and neither were the videos within. Also, this was a Universal Google search, not one for videos. (Sorry, I'm not allowed to reference directly). Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | Blenny0 -
Higher rank created a quick boost but it didn't last..
I made a few changes to my website which bumped it up to 3rd place for the main keyword and brought it up to the first page for some of the other keywords. I saw a spike in traffic and conversions for 2 days, but now it went down significantly again. How can I research the cause of this?
Algorithm Updates | | Mariannag72820