Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why are http and https pages showing different domain/page authorities?
-
My website www.aquatell.com was recently moved to the Shopify platform. We chose to use the http domain, because we didn't want to change too much, too quickly by moving to https. Only our shopping cart is using https protocol. We noticed however, that https versions of our non-cart pages were being indexed, so we created canonical tags to point the https version of a page to the http version. What's got me puzzled though, is when I use open site explorer to look at domain/page authority values, I get different scores for the http vs. https version. And the https version is always better. Example: http://www.aquatell.com DA = 21 and https://www.aquatell.com DA = 27. Can somebody please help me make sense of this? Thanks,
-
Laurie
It should be clarified that Moz's Domain Authority, while a really solid metric, is not the metric Google has or uses. And domain authority can have a few artificial quirks. So I would not be alarmed at all.
That said - can you explain where you are seeing the two different number? I see a Page Authority of 39 for both http and https - and I see a domain authority of 27 for both http and https.
Now, even IF Moz has two different numbers for http and https, again, this is not what Google is doing, it's just an approximation.
Setting a canonical from https to http is just a band-aid and I would not recommend that approach. I would recommend having a site-wide 301 redirect so if a user lands on the https version of a URL it redirects them to the same version of that page on http. Or vice vera, whichever version you are prioritizing.
I have to respectfully disagree with Dmytro and Robert - as mentioned, Moz's metrics are not Google metrics - and the best action here is always to prioritize http or https with redirects.
-
Hi Laurie,
Absolutely - the answer is actually more simple than you might think. Google has explicitly stated that HTTPS is a ranking factor and benefits the domain more than HTTP. Check out this post on the Moz Blog by Cyrus Sheppard:
https://moz.com/blog/ranking-factors-2015
I will quote from the blog itself:
"While page length, hreflang use, and total number of links all show moderate association with Google rankings, we found that using HTTPS has a very low positive correlation. This could indicate it's the "tie-breaker" Google claims."
Here's a link to the actual survey data:
https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
Basically, HTTPS is a tie-breaker system set up whereby if all else remains the same, a site using HTTPS will beat out a site using HTTP in the SERPs.
This is perfectly expressed in your data.
Hope this helps to make sense of the situation and let me know if you need anything else,
Rob
-
Hi,
It seems like Google might be treating http and https as 2 different websites. Have you specified the preffered website version in your Search Console?
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
-
Impact of keyword/keyphrases density on header/footer
Hi, It might be a stupid question but I prefer to clear things out if it's not a problem: Today I've seen a website where visitors are prompted no less than 5 times per page to "call [their] consultants".
On-Page Optimization | | GhillC
This appears twice on the header, once on the side bar (mouse over pop up), once in the body of most of the pages and once in the footer. So obviously, besides the body of the pages, it appears at least 4 times on every single pages as it's part of the website template. In the past, I never really wondered re the menu, the footer etc as it's usually not hammering the same stuff repeatedly everywhere. Anyway, I then had a look at their blog and, given the average length of their articles, the keyword density around these prompts is about 0.5% to 0.8% for each page. This is huge! So basically my question is as follow: is Google's algorithm smart enough to understand what this is and make abstraction of this "content" to focus on the body of the pages (probably simply focusing on the tags)? Or does it send wrong signals and confuse search engine more than anything else? Reading stuff such as this, I wonder how does it work when this is not navigational or links elements. Thanks,
G Note: I’m purposely not speaking about the UX which is obviously impacted by such a hammering process.0 -
Will it upset Google if I aggregate product page reviews up into a product category page?
We have reviews on our product pages and we are considering averaging those reviews out and putting them on specific category pages in order for the average product ratings to be displayed in search results. Each averaged category review would be only for the products within it's category, and all reviews are from users of the site, no 3rd party reviews. For example, averaging the reviews from all of our boxes products pages, and listing that average review on the boxes category page. My question is, will this be doing anything wrong in the eyes of Google, and if so how so? -Derick
On-Page Optimization | | Deluxe0 -
Recommended Schema for a Collection/Category page?
Hi There! Taking on a small project up updating and adding in Schema to a clients site; a previous developer half put in data vocabulary. In my planning I was wondering if their would be a best schema type for category page of products - or a collection of products? Any ideas and experience? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | paul-bold0 -
Author Byline Question
What's the best practice for displaying author information at the beginning of an article? We're presently displaying it as: By <Author> • Jan 16, 2015 • <City>. We're considering making it even more concise by removing the term 'By'. Would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we did this? Any other ways we should optimize?
On-Page Optimization | | TheaterMania0 -
Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice?
Hi GuysMy father is currently using a programmer to build his new site. Knowing a little about SEO etc, I was a little suspicious of the work carried out. **Anyone with good programming and SEO knowledge, please offer your advice!**This page http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/gallery-range-wood-flooring/ which is soon to be http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/ you'll see has a number of different products. The products on this particular page have been built into colour categories like thishttp://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/lights-greys http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/beiges http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/darks-blacks This is fine. Eventually when we add to our selection of woods, we'll easily segment each product into "colour categories" for users to easily navigate to. My question is - Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice? Please see below... Visible URL - http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns/cipressa/Below is the permalink seen in Word Press for this page also.Permalink: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/and in the Word Press snippet shows the same permalink urlCipressa | Engineered Brown Wood | The Wood Gallerieswww.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/ Buy Cipressa Engineered Brown Wood, available at The Wood Galleries, London. Provides an Exceptional Foundation for Elegant Décor, Extravagant .. If this is completely ok and has no negative search impact - then I'm happy. If not what should I advise to my programmer to do? Your help would be very much appreciated. Regards Faye
On-Page Optimization | | Faye2340 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
Page rank check
Hello everyone, How long should I wait to see if page rank for optimized pages have improved? cheers
On-Page Optimization | | PremioOscar0 -
Google Page Rank of my site has dropped from 4/10 to 3/10
Google Page rank of my website has been dropped after Panda Update. Can anyone help me out to tell me the possible reasons about the same. We have tried to make our website more lively and user friendly. We have indulged some graphics to make it more attractive. But it seems it backfired us. my site is http://www.myrealdata.com as well as Google page ranking of my Quickbooks hosting page has been dropped as well. It would be great if someone can help me out with expert suggestions.
On-Page Optimization | | SangeetaC1