Google Indexing Of Pages As HTTPS vs HTTP
-
We recently updated our site to be mobile optimized. As part of the update, we had also planned on adding SSL security to the site. However, we use an iframe on a lot of our site pages from a third party vendor for real estate listings and that iframe was not SSL friendly and the vendor does not have that solution yet. So, those iframes weren't displaying the content.
As a result, we had to shift gears and go back to just being http and not the new https that we were hoping for.
However, google seems to have indexed a lot of our pages as https and gives a security error to any visitors. The new site was launched about a week ago and there was code in the htaccess file that was pushing to www and https. I have fixed the htaccess file to no longer have https.
My questions is will google "reindex" the site once it recognizes the new htaccess commands in the next couple weeks?
-
That's not going to solve your problem, vikasnwu. Your immediate issue is that you have URLs in the index that are HTTPS and will cause searchers who click on them not to reach your site due to the security error warnings. The only way to fix that quickly is to get the SSL certificate and redirect to HTTP in place.
You've sent the search engines a number of very conflicting signals. Waiting while they try to work out what URLs they're supposed to use and then waiting while they reindex them is likely to cause significant traffic issues and ongoing ranking harm before the SEs figure it out for themselves. The whole point of what I recommended is it doesn't depend on the SEs figuring anything out - you will have provided directives that force them to do what you need.
Paul
-
Remember you can force indexing using Google Search Console
-
Nice answer!
But you forgot to mention:
- Updating the sitemap files with the good URLs
- Upload them to Google Search Console
- You can even force the indexing at Google Search Console
Thanks,
Roberto
-
Paul,
I just provided the solution to de-index the https version. I understood that what's wanted, as they need their client to fix their end.And of course that there is no way to noindex by protocol. I do agree what you are saying.
Thanks a lot for explaining further and prividing other ways to help solvinf the issue, im inspired by used like you to help others and make a great community.
GR.
-
i'm first going to see what happens if I just upload a sitemap with http URLs since there wasn't a sitemap in webmaster tools from before. Will give you the update then.
-
Great! I'd really like to hear how it goes when you get the switch back in.
P.
-
Paul that does make sense - i'll add the SSL certificate back, and then redirect from https to http via the htaccess file.
-
You can't noindex a URL by protocol, Gaston - adding no-index would eliminate the page from being returned as a search result regardless of whether HTTP or HTTPS, essentially making those important pages invisible and wasting whatever link equity they may have. (You also can't block in robots.txt by protocol either, in my experience.)
-
There's a very simple solution to this issue - and no, you absolutely do NOT want to artificially force removal of those HTTPS pages from the index.
You need to make sure the SSL certificate is still in place, then re-add the 301-redirect in the site's htaccess file, but this time redirecting all HTTPS URLs back their HTTP equivalents.
You don't want to forcibly "remove" those URLs from the SERPs, because they are what Google now understands to be the correct pages. If you remove them, you'll have to wait however long it takes for Google and other search engines to completely re-understand the conflicting signals you've sent them about your site. And traffic will inevitably suffer in that process. Instead, you need to provide standard directives that the search engines don't have to interpret and can't ignore. Once the search engines have seen the new redirects for long enough, they'll start reverting the SERP listings back to the HTTP URLs naturally.
The key here is the SSL cert must stay in place. As it stands now, a visitor clicking a page in the search engine is trying to make an HTTPS connection to your site. If there is no certificate in place, they will get the harmful security warning. BUT! You can't just put in a 301-redirect in that case. The reason for this is that the initial connection from the SERP is coming in over the "secure channel". That connection must be negotiated securely first, before the redirect can even be read. If that first connection isn't secure, the browser will return the security warning without ever trying to read the redirect.
Having the SSL cert in place even though you're not running all pages under HTTPS means that first connection can still be made securely, then the redirect can be read back to the HTTP URL, and the visitor will get to the page they expect in a seamless manner. And search engines will be able to understand and apply authority without misunderstandings/confusion.
Hope that all makes sense?
Paul
-
Noup, Robots.txt works on a website level. This means that there has to be a file for the http and another for the https website.
And, there is no need for waiting until the whole site is indexed.Just to clarify, robots.txt itself does not remove pages already indexed. It just blocks bots from crawling a website and/or specific pages with in it.
-
GR - thanks for the response.
Given our site is just 65 pages, would it make sense to just put all of the site's "https" URLs in the robots.txt file as "noindex" now rather than waiting for all the pages to get indexed as "https" and then remove them?
And then upload a sitemap to webmaster tools with the URLS as "http://"?
VW
-
Hello vikasnwu,
As what you are looking for is to remove from index the pages, follow this steps:
- Allow the whole website to be crawable in the robots.txt
- add the robots meta tag with "noindex,follow" parametres
- wait several weeks, 6 to 8 weeks is a fairly good time. Or just do a followup on those pages
- when you got the results (all your desired pages to be de-indexed) re-block with robots.txt those pages
- DO NOT erase the meta robots tag.
Remember that http://site.com andhttps://site.com are different websites to google.
When your client's website is fixed with https, follow these steps:- Allow the whole website (or the parts wanted to be indexed) to be crawable in robots.txt
- Remove the robots meta tag
- Redirect 301 http to https
- Sit and wait.
Information about the redirection to HTTPS and a cool checklist:
The Big List of SEO Tips and Tricks for Using HTTPS on Your Website - Moz Blog
The HTTP to HTTPs Migration Checklist in Google Docs to Share, Copy & Download - AleydaSolis
Google SEO HTTPS Migration Checklist - SERoundtableHope I'm helpful.
Best luck.
GR.
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
-
Domain Level Redirects - HTTP and HTTPS
About 2 years ago (well before I started with the company), we did an http=>https migration. It was not done correctly. The http=>https redirect was never inserted into the .htaccess file. In essence, we have 2 websites. According to Google search console, we have 19,000 HTTP URLs indexed and 9,500 HTTPS URLs indexed. I've done a larger scale http=>https migration (60,000 SKUs), and our rankings dropped significantly for 6-8 weeks. We did this the right way, using sitemaps, and http and https GSC properties. Google came out recently and said that this type of rankings drop is normal for large sites. I need to set the appropriate expectations for management. Questions: How badly is the domain split affecting our rankings, if at all? Our rankings aren't bad, but I believe we are underperforming our backlink profile. Can we expect a net rankings gain when the smoke clears? There are a number of other technical SEO issues going on as well. How badly will our rankings drop (temporarily) and for how long when we add the redirect to the .htaccess file? Is there a way to mitigate the rankings impact? For example, only submitting partial sitemaps to our GSC http property? Has anyone gone through this before?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Satans_Apprentice0 -
Product Pages not indexed by Google
We built a website for a jewelry company some years ago, and they've recently asked for a meeting and one of the points on the agenda will be why their products pages have not been indexed. Example: http://rocks.ie/details/Infinity-Ring/7170/ I've taken a look but I can't see anything obvious that is stopping pages like the above from being indexed. It has a an 'index, follow all' tag along with a canonical tag. Am I missing something obvious here or is there any clear reason why product pages are not being indexed at all by Google? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Update I was told 'that each of the product pages on the full site have corresponding page on mobile. They are referred to each other via cannonical / alternate tags...could be an angle as to why product pages are not being indexed.'
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobbieD910 -
Website Does not index in any page?
I created a website www.astrologersktantrik.com 4 days ago and fetch it with google but still my website does not index on google as the keywords I use is with low competition but still my website does not appear on any keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ramansaab0 -
Google authorship page versus posrt
I have a wordpress.com blog and have recently set up google authorship (at least I think I have). If I add a new post what happens to the old post in terms of authorship? Is the solution opening a new page for each article? If so does the contribution link in google+ pick up all pages if you only have home link? many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | harddaysgrind1 -
Multi-Location SEO: Sites vs Pages
I just started with a new company that requires multi-location SEO for its niche product/service. Currently, we have a main corporate website, as well as, 40+ individual dealer websites (we host all). Keep in mind each of these dealers consist of only 1-2 people, so corporate I will be managing the site or sites and content strategy. Many of the individual dealer sites actually rank very well (#1-#3) in their areas for our targeted keywords, but they all use the same duplicate content. Also, there are many dealer sites that have dropped off the radar in last year, which is probably because of the duplicate and static content. So I'm at a crossroads... Attempt to redo all of these location sites with unique and local content for each or Create optimized unique pages for each of them on our main site and redirect their current local domains to their page on our site Any advise regarding which direction to go in and why. Why is very important. It will be very difficult to convince a dealer that is #1 with his local site that we are redirecting to our main site, so I need some good ammo and reasoning. Also, any tips toward achieving local seo success will be greatly appreciated, too! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-coopersmith0 -
Google Page Rank Dead?
Does PR still work? I have sites that have PR3 and get almost no traffic and sites that are PR1 and get thousands of uniques per month. My PR on my main sites haven't moved for about 7 years, even though we've grown significantly. I know lots of you are going to jump in with get the MOZ toolbar, which I already have done, and I agree, it's great ... But can anyone tell me about what's going on with Google PR? Is it still active? Or has Google abandoned? I noticed that the Google toolbar is not even available for Google Chrome. That should say something ... If you like this question, do me a favor, and give me a THUMBS UP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold2 -
Do Google use HTTPS as a trust indicator?
Scenario: Two sites, exactly the same with a form to capture customer details on the home page (e.g. name, address). Would Google rank a site that uses HTTPS over a site that uses HTTP? From what I've heard, they would trust the HTTPS site more than HTTP and therefore rank it higher. Forum opinions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
Google indexing flash content
Hi Would googles indexing of flash content count towards page content? for example I have over 7000 flash files, with 1 unique flash file per page followed by a short 2 paragraph snippet, would google count the flash as content towards the overall page? Because at the moment I've x-tagged the roberts with noindex, nofollow and no archive to prevent them from appearing in the search engines. I'm just wondering if the google bot visits and accesses the flash file it'll get the x-tag noindex, nofollow and then stop processing. I think this may be why the panda update also had an effect. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Flapjack0