Losing backlinks between http and https
-
Late last year, Shopify moved all their sites from http to https.
I did an audit of a Shopify site recently and discovered the following...
- The https version of the site has just 13 backlinks from 5 domains
- The http version of the site has 568 backlinks from 48 domains
So I went into the blog (which is on a different domain - long story) and changed all the backlinks from http to https. One week later... the https version of the site now has 278 backlinks from the same 5 domains.
I've been told that Google doesn't worry about this when it comes to rankings. Not sure if this is true or not. But I definitely believe this DOES affect MOZ Domain Authority.
Can anybody confirm or deny this? If the backlinks do not change from http to https following a migration, does this impact MOZ Domain Authority and/or Google rankings?
-
Don't really know if redirects were in place. Only just taken over the management. But from what I can gather, Shopify moved all sites on its platform from http to https.
The URLs do all seem to redirect. But the URLs within backlinks all still point to http. If I run a report in ahrefs, the http version might still have hundreds or thousands of backlinks, but the https does not. At the same time, I have seen MOZ domain authority plummet.
I just manually updated a bunch of backlinks for one site to point to https. Now ahrefs is picking them up as backlinks in their report.
-
Hi,
Was there a redirect in place to make sure all old links on your site will go from HTTP to HTTPS? If Yes, it wouldn't really matter as it will make sure that the link value + links will be attributed to the new version on HTTPS. If that wasn't the case than it will obviously have quite an impact. These days though it's a bit vague if couple does recognize that a site is also available on a HTTPS.
Martijn.
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
-
Google cache is for a 3rd parties site for HTTP version and correct for HTTPS
If I search Google for my cache I get the following: cache:http://www.saucydates.com -> Returns the cache of netball.org (HTTPS page with Plesk default page) cache:https://www.saucydates.com -> Displays the correct page Prior to this my http cache was the Central Bank of Afghanistan. For most searches at present my index page is not returned and when it is, it’s the Net Ball Plesk page. This is, of course hurting my search traffic considerably. ** I have tried many things, here is the current list:** If I fetch as Google in webmaster tools the HTTPS fetch and render is correct. If I fetch the HTTP version I get a redirect (which is correct as I have a 301 HTTP to HTTPS redirect). If I turn off HTTPS on my server and remove the redirect the fetch and render for HTTP version is correct. The 301 redirect is controlled with the 301 Safe redirect option in Plesk 12.x The SSL cert is valid and with COMODO I have ensured the IP address (which is shared with a few other domains that form my sites network / functions) has a default site I have placed a site on my PTR record and ensured the HTTPS version goes back to HTTP as it doesn’t need SSL I have checked my site in Waybackwhen for 1 year and there are no hacked redirects I have checked the Netball site in Waybackwhen for 1 year, mid last year there is an odd firewall alert page. If you check the cache for the https version of the netball site you get another sites default plesk page. This happened at the same time I implemented SSL Points 6 and 7 have been done to stop the server showing a Plesk Default page as I think this could be the issue (duplicate content) ** Ideas:** Is this a 302 redirect hi-jack? Is this a Google bug? Is this an issue with duplicate content as both servers can have a default Plesk page (like millions of others!) A network of 3 sites mixed up that have plesk could be a clue? Over to the experts at MOZ, can you help? Thanks, David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dmcubed0 -
SEO implications of serving a different site on HTTPS vs. HTTP
I have two sites: Site A, and Site B. Both sites are hosted on the same IP address, and server using IIS 7.5. Site B has an SSL cert, and Site A does not. It has recently been brought to my attention that when requesting the HTTPS version of Site A (the site w/o an SSL cert), IIS will serve Site B... Our server has been configured this way for roughly a year. We don't do any promotion of Site A using HTTPS URLs, though I suppose somebody could accidentally link to or type in HTTPS and get the wrong website. Until we can upgrade to IIS8 / Windows Server 2012 to support SNI, it seems I have two reasonable options: Move Site B over to its own dedicated IP, and let HTTPS requests for Site A 404. Get another certificate for Site A, and have it's HTTPS version 301 redirect to HTTP/non-ssl. #1 seems preferable, as we don't really need an SSL cert for Site A, and HTTPS doesn't really have any SEO benefits over HTTP/non-ssl. However, I'm concerned if we've done any SEO damage to Site A by letting our configuration sit this way for so long. I could see Googlebot trying https versions of websites to test if they exist, even if there aren't any ssl/https links for the given domain in the wild... In which case, option #2 would seem to mostly reverse any damage done (if any). Though Site A seems to be indexed fine. No concerns other than my gut. Does anybody have any recommendations? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud0 -
How to properly implement HTTPS?
We are looking at implementing HTTPS for our site. I have done a little research but can't find anything recent, http://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-and-http-and-https is the most recent thing I found. Does everything in the answers still apply? Should I just do a 301 redirect to all new https? Or add a canonical tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Duplicate pages with http and https
Hi all, We changed the payment part of our site to https from http a while ago. However once on the https pages, all the footer and header links are relative URLs, so once users have reached the payment pages and then re-navigate back to other pages in our website they stay on https. The build up of this happening has led to Google indexing all our pages in https (something we did not want to happen), and now we are in the situation where our homepage listing on Google is https rather than http. We would prefer the organic listings to be http (rather than https) and having read lots on this (included the great posts on the moz (still feels odd not refering to it as seomoz!) blog around this subject), possible solutions include redirects or a canoncial tags. My additional questions around these options are: 1. We already have 2 redirects on some pages (long story), will another one negatively impact our rankings? 2. Is a canonical a strong enough hint to Google to stop Google indexing the https versions of these page to the extent that out http pages will appear in natural listings again? If anyone has any other suggestions or other ideas of how to address this issue, that would be great! Thanks 🙂 Diana
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Building "keyword" backlinks
Looking for some opinions here please. Been involved in seo for a couple of years mainly working on my websites and picking up the odd client here and there through word of mouth. I must admit that up until a few months back I was guilty of using some grey methods of link building - linkvana, unique article wizard and the such. While no penalties were handed out to my domains and some decent rankings gained, I got tired of always being on the lookout for what the next Google update will do to my results and which networks were being hit, and so I moved a lot more into the 'proper' way of seoing. These days my primary sources for backlinks are much more respectable... myblogguest bloggerlinkup postjoint Guest Blog Finder http://ultramarketer.com/guest-blogger-finder/ - not sure where i came across this resource but it's very handy I use these sources alongside industry only directories and general word of mouth. Ironically I have found that doing the word by hand not only leads to results I can happyily show people (content wise) but also it's much quicker and cheaper. The increased authority of the sites means far fewer links are needed. The one area I still am having a little issue with is that of building keyword based backlinks. I now find it fairly easy to get my content on a reasonable quality site - DA to 40 and above, however the vast majority of these sites will allow the backlink only as the company name or as a generic read more type thing. This is fine and it is improving my website performance and authority. The trouble I am finding is that while i am ranking for the title tag and some keywords in the page, I am struggling to get backlinks for other keywords. In an ideal world every page on the site would be optimised for a different keyword and you could then just the site name as anchor text to build the authority of that page and make it rank for it's content, but what about when you (or the client) wants to rank the home for a number of different keywords, some not featured on the page. The keywords are too similar to go to the trouble of making unique pages for, and that would also add no value to the site. My question really then, after a very long winded way of getting there, is are others finding it much more difficult to gain keyword based backlinks these days? The great thing about the grey seo tools, as mentioned above, is that it was super easy to get the backlinks with whatever anchor text you wanted - even if you needed hundreds of the thing to compensate for the low value of each!! Thanks Carl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrumpyCarl0 -
50,000 backlinks in webmaster tools from one site???
Hi All, I'm new to evaluating backlinks, but I just saw I got over 50,000 links from a backlink that was added on ONE page at this site here: http://www.netnewspublisherDOTcom. I presume this is not a good thing, and if I contact them to remove the one link on the one page, it won't solve the other 49,999 links that Google is seeing pointing to us, so what do I do??. Should I contact them and ask to remove it and see if they don't and then disavow? Or would you just tell Google to disavow the whole site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlm120 -
Does Google punish sites for Backlinks?
Here is Matt Cutts video, for those of you who have not seen it already. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4dAWb5jUws (Very Short) In this Video Matt explains that Google does not look at backlinks. Many link spamming sites have detected, there have been many website receiving warning messages in their Google web tools to deindex these links, etc.. My theory is that Google will not punish sites for backlinks. However, they manually check for "link farming sites" and warn anyone affiliated with them, just in case these links were built from a competitor. This way they can eliminate all the "Bad Link Farm" sites and not hurt anyone who does not deserve to be hurt. Google is not going to give us all their information to rank, they dont want us to rank. They want us to PPC. However, they do want to have the best SERPs available. I call it Google juggling! Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Experience with 307 HTTP status code
Hello, is there anybody how has got some experience with 307 HTTP status code? We would like to use 307 HTTP status code (temp redirect) for disabling temporary some of our shop-categories where all products are out of stock. Generally a few days or hours later products are back in stock and category page is also back. Is it a good idea to use 307 beccause link sould be disabled temorary or should we use 301 instead? Best regards Steffen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | steffen_0
