Moving from http to https: image duplicate issue?
-
Hello everyone,
We have recently moved our entire website virtualsheetmusic.com from http:// to https:// and now we are facing a question about images.
Here is the deal: All webpages URLs are properly redirected to their corresponding https if they are called from former http links. Whereas, due to compatibility issues, all images URLs can be called either via http or https, so that any of the following URLs work without any redirect:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/images/icons/ResponsiveLogo.png
https://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/images/icons/ResponsiveLogo.png
Please note though that all internal links are relative and not absolute.
So, my question is: Can that be a problem from the SEO stand point? In particular: We have thousands of images indexed on Google, mostly images related to our digital sheet music preview image files, and many of them are ranking pretty well in the image pack search results. Could this change be detrimental in some way? Or doesn't make any difference in the eyes of Google? As I wrote above, all internal links are relative, so an image tag like this one:
Hasn't changed at all, it is just loaded in a https context.
I'll wait for your thoughts on this. Thank you in advance!
-
No problem
-
Great! Glad to know that. Thank you Dimitrii, I appreciated your help very much!
-
Oh, I see. Yeah, there shouldn't be any problems, if someone else links to your images with http. And yes, your assumption is correct
-
Thank you Dimitrii to clarifying, actually all our webpages now load images only via the https://, but since many external websites are hard-linking to many of our images via the regular http:// protocol, I was thinking to allow linking to them the "insecure" way if requested. Do you see my point? So... to better clarify my initial question, let's say Google is spidering one of those external affiliates and finds an image tag like this:
Will Google consider the image found at:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/image.jpg
a duplicate of:
https://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/image.jpg
?? This was my original question...
In any case, I have made some testings today, and I have been able to redirect all images via .htaccess permanently (301) to https:// and looks like even if an image is requested with the http:// from the browser, it shows up correctly because the web browser handles redirects for images in the same way it handles them for the web page itself.
So... my concern should be solved this way. But in case, for any reason, I need to be able to serve the same image from both protocols (http or https) it is my understand that that shouldn't be an issue anyway. Is my assumption correct?
Thanks again.
-
I did quick search, and there are lots of good articles about why images are not duplicate content: http://bfy.tw/9Qy4
-
So, the reason I recommend having images loading only through one resource is the "insecurity" of https connection, if any resources are loaded not over https. You might have seen that sometimes instead of green lock in a browser bar, it can show yellow exclamation mark - that's one of the reasons. And also it's just cleaner, if everything is loaded the same way.
Here is a link to resource about mixed content: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/security/prevent-mixed-content/fixing-mixed-content
-
Thank you Dimitrii for your reply.
Well, your two statements above contradicts each other, in my opinion. You see, what really concerns me is your last suggestion:
"it's better to make sure that images (and all the other resources) available only through one protocol - http or https."
And hence my original concern. Why should we make sure that images are available only through one protocol if you say first that there isn't such thing as duplicate content for images? Why should we concern about that then?
Sorry for my further request for clarification. I really appreciated your help!
-
Howdy.
As far as I understand, there is no such thing as duplicate content just for images. Duplicate content is more for the page as a whole. Especially, since you guys redirected all the links, you shouldn't have any problems, since google will simply "realize" the change.
Now, it's better to make sure that images (and all the other resources) available only through one protocol - http or https.
Hope this helps
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
-
Images are not indexing as they are in temporary ads and when the ads expired we redirect the ad image to the parent category
As we are a classified ads site, our ads expire after some time,and we redirect 301 the ad post page to the parent category And images urls in the ad page is redirected to, so they are not getting index in google image..what is the best solution for getting image index in this situation: 301 redirect images Keep images And so more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | divar0 -
Pagination & duplicate meta
Hi I have a few pages flagged for duplicate meta e.g.: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches I can;t see anything wrong with the pagination & other pages have the same code, but aren't flagged for duplicate: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2 I can't see to find the issue - any ideas? Becky0 -
HTTP Pages Indexed as HTTPS
My site used to be entirely HTTPS. I switched months ago so that all links in the pages that the public has access to are now http only. But I see now that when I do a site:www.qjamba.com, the results include many pages with https in the beginning (including the home page!), which is not what I want. I can redirect to http but that doesn't remove https from the indexing, right? How do I solve this problem? sample of results: Qjamba: Free Local and Online Coupons, coupon codes ... **<cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/</cite>**One and Done savings. Printable coupons and coupon codes for thousands of local and online merchants. No signups, just click and save. Chicnova online coupons and shopping - Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/Chicnova</cite>**Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Chicnova. Coupon codes for online discounts on Apparel & Accessories products. Singlehop online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/singlehop</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Singlehop. Coupon codes for online discounts on Business & Industrial, Service products. Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. Online Hockey Savings: Free Local Fast | Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/online-shopping/hockey</cite>**Find big online savings at popular and specialty stores on Hockey, and more. Hitcase online coupons and shopping - Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/online-savings/hitcase</cite>**Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Hitcase. Coupon codes for online discounts on Electronics, Cameras & Optics products. Avanquest online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/avanquest</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Avanquest. Coupon codes for online discounts on Software products.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Are ALL duplicate title tags bad??
We’ve had some success recently by reducing the number of duplicate title tags on our website. We have managed to fix all the simple cases but there are a number of stubborn examples that we don’t know how to fix. A lot of the duplicate tags come from the website’s forums. Many questions have been asked multiple times over the years where the user has phrased the question in the same way. This has led to many cases where different forums posts have the same title tag. For example, there are six title tags with the words ‘’need help”! These are being highlighted as duplicates and currently we have several thousand of these. Would this be a problem? I’d be tempted to say that we should leave them as they don’t seem unnatural to me. One solution other solution we are considering is to append the forum name to the question to any post after the original, falling back to appending the date if that doesn’t distinguish it. Do people think that this is a good solution to implement or would it be better to leave these duplicate title tags as they are? Any help would be appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
WMT Showing Duplicate Meta Description Issues Altough Posts Were Redirected
Dear Moz Community, Some time ago we've change the structure of our website and we've redirected the old URL's to the new ones. About 2,000 posts were redirected at that time. While checking Webmaster Tools a few days ago I've discovered that about 500 duplicate meta-description issues appear in the "HTML Improvements" area. To my surprise, altough the old posts were redirected to the new path, WMT sees the description of the old posts similar with the one of the new post. Moreover, after changing the structure all meta-descriptions were modified and they weren't the same used before the restructure. For example I've redirected /blog/taxi-transfer-from-merton-sw19-to-london-city-airport/ to /destinations/greater-london/merton-sw19/taxi-transfer-to-london-city-airport-from-merton/ Now they are shown as having duplicate content. I've checked the redirects and they are working. I get the same error from the redirected pages for about 150 titles. Did anyone else get this errors or can you please offer me some suggestions about how I can fix this? Thank you in advance! Tiberiu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiberiu0 -
Duplicate Content
http://www.pensacolarealestate.com/JAABA/jsp/HomeAdvice/answers.jsp?TopicId=Buy&SubtopicId=Affordability&Subtopicname=What%20You%20Can%20Afford http://www.pensacolarealestate.com/content/answers.html?Topic=Buy&Subtopic=Affordability I have no idea how the first address exists at all... I ran the SEOMOZ tool and I got 600'ish DUPLICATE CONTENT errors! I have errors on content/titles etc... How do I get rid of all the content being generated from this JAABA/JSP "jibberish"? Please ask questions that will help you help me. I have always been 1st on google local and I have a business that is starting to hurt very seriously from being number three 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0 -
Nuanced duplicate content problem.
Hi guys, I am working on a recently rebuilt website, which has some duplicate content issues that are more nuanced than usual. I have a plan of action (which I will describe further), so please let me know if it's a valid plan or if I am missing something. Situation: The client is targeting two types of users: business leads (Type A) and potential employees (Type B), so for each of their 22 locations, they have 2 pages - one speaking to Type A and another to Type B. Type A location page contains a description of the location. In terms of importance, Type A location pages are secondary because to the Type A user, locations are not of primary importance. Type B location page contains the same description of the location plus additional lifestyle description. These pages carry more importance, since they are attempting to attract applicants to work in specific places. So I am planning to rank these pages eventually for a combination of Location Name + Keyword. Plan: New content is not an option at this point, so I am planning to set up canonical tags on both location Types and make Type B, the canonical URL, since it carries more importance and more SEO potential. The main nuance is that while Type A and Type B location pages contain some of the same content (about 75%-80%), they are not exactly the same. That is why I am not 100% sure that I should canonicalize them, but still most of the wording on the page is identical, so... Any professional opinion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naymark.biz0