HTTP to HTTPS Transition, Large Drop in Search Traffic
-
My URL is: https://www.seattlecoffeegear.comWe implemented https across the site on Friday. Saturday and Sunday search traffic was normal/slightly higher than normal (in analytics) and slightly down in GWT. Today, it has dropped significantly in both, to about half of normal search traffic. From everything we can see, we implemented this correctly.
- 301 redirected all http requests to https (and yes, they go to the correct page and not to the homepage )
- Rewrote hardcoded internal links
- Registered/submitted sitemaps from https in Bing and GWT
- Used fetch and render to ensure Google could reach the site and also was redirected appropriately from http to https versions
- Ensured robots.txt does not block https or secure
We also use a CDN (though I don't think that impacts anything) and have had no customer issues with accessing or using the website since the transition.Is there anything else I might be missing that could correlate to a drop in search impressions or is this just a waiting game of a few days to let Google sort through the change we've made and reindex everything (it dropped to 0 indexed for a day and is now up to 1744 of our 2180 pages indexed)?Thank you so much for any input!Kaylie
-
Thank you for the reminder! I believe these have all been switched over, but I'll give it another look to be sure!
Kaylie
-
Important think to remember if you are running AdWords to your site is to make sure that your AdWords also point to the https url.
Also when you create new AdWords add pay attention, as default setting is http.
-
Hmmm, I don't appear to have that icon. Perhaps because sampling is not occurring on my report?
I actually felt that the transition went really well, which is why I was surprised by the data. I have a feeling, however, that I indeed just need to give it a few more days and keep checking the traffic/search information.
I'll keep you posted on how things pan out over the next week or so!
-
For Webmaster Tools, you are only getting partial data from the 27th right now. I'd monitor WT for the first full week post switch and compare your data then.
Also, for Google Analytics, that 4% difference may be due to having only partial data from today. So you may need to wait a bit longer for a more accurate comparison there. That said, 4% difference in traffic isn't alarming for the amount of time you're digging into. You're probably overly sensitive after the switch. I'm sure I'd be.
Once thing you can do in GA is ask for higher precision on the reporting. Click the weird icon next to the graduation cap in the top right and slide the toggle under "Control the number of sessions used to calculate this report" toward Higher Precision.
I'm really interested in your experience because we're mapping out a move to https, too.
-
Thanks for the response!
Sorry about the timeout error. Not sure what happened there either. I have been unable to replicate it.
You were partially right about the dates. So now I am looking at the same time table for Analytics and GWT (21-27) and I see a huge "drop" on the 27th in GWT. However, if I extend GA through today, I see a minor drop on Friday the 26th and then it bumps back up to normal levels. Is there a chance that maybe GWT is reporting search/clicks from part way through the 27th rather than the full day of data, creating a false sense of alarm?
I wanted to see a larger set of data that might tell a more complete story. So, looking in GA, I only see a change of 5% in traffic when comparing the 23rd-29th with the 16th-22nd. That is a 4% decrease in Google organic, but I don't feel like these numbers are the cause for alarm that GWT graphs initially indicate. Thoughts?
Thanks for your input!
Kaylie
-
I get a 504 error when I first tried to load your site (https). Then I loaded the http version, but was redirected to the HTTPS version after some time. Not sure what's going on there. I could not repeat the error.
Also, Webmaster Tools data is about two days delayed. Are you sure you're comparing the same days in both applications? (Not uncommon mistake for me to have made.)
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
-
How to resolve warning of pages with redirect chain when its your http:// to https://www.
how do I write a 301 redirect in the htaccess file so that http:// goes straight to https://www. Moz replyEli profileHey there!Thanks for reaching out to us!
Technical SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
Sudden Drop in Rankings
I manage a site and this past month have noticed some pretty significant drops in rankings for some of our main keywords. I'm trying to understand why and what I can do to correct it. We did do some 301 redirects a little over a month ago so I've been wondering if that has anything to do with it as Google indexes the new URLs. One thing I did notice in Moz is that it is showing that Google is indexing the new URLs but associating them with the wrong keywords in the wrong location. The company services three locations and each location has a service page on the site. But Moz is showing that in Atlanta, the indexed URL is the Nashville one, etc. Is there any way to affect that? Another thing to note is that organic search traffic is actually up so it doesn't appear to be affecting them which I find a bit strange. Just looking for any insight as to things I should be looking into to explain the sudden drops. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Moving from http to https - what do I need to do in Google Search Console?
Hi all, I have moved my site from http to https. I current have two profiles in Google Search Console: http://mysite.com
Technical SEO | | Bee159
http://www.mysite.com Do I need to set up the same but with https and if so, what do I then do with the http profiles? Do I delete them? Or just remove the sitemaps? Confused.0 -
Using http: shorthand inside canonical tag ("//" instead of "http:") can cause harm?
HI, I am planning to launch a new site, and shortly after to move to HTTPS. to save the need to change over 5,000 canonical tags in pages the webmaster suggested we implement inside the rel canonical "//" instead of the absolute path, would that do any damage or be a problem? oranges-south-dakota" />
Technical SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda0 -
Sitemap indexed pages dropping
About a month ago I noticed my pages indexed from my sitemap are dropping.There are 134 pages in my sitemap and only 11 are indexed. It used to be 117 pages and just died off quickly. I still seem to be getting consistant search traffic but I'm just not sure whats causing this. There are no warnings or manual actions required in GWT that I can find.
Technical SEO | | zenstorageunits0 -
Redesigning client website and will be losing a lot of landing pages. How to avoid tanking search traffic?
We are working with a client who is changing the direction of the company's marketing efforts. The current site includes many (approx 100) pages for each partner they work with (each partner has its own page). The new site will be losing many of these and we want to be sure we don't destroy organic traffic/rankings in the process. These landing pages don't directly garner the most traffic but it will definitely be a big change in the size of the site. Any advice for how to best handle the redesign is appreciated, thanks!
Technical SEO | | KMofOutlier0 -
Https indexed...how?
Hello Moz, Since a while i am struggling with a SEO case: At the moment a https version of a homepage of a client of us is indexed in Google. Thats really strange because the url is redirected to an other website url for three weeks now. And we did everything to make clear to google that he has to index the other url.
Technical SEO | | Searchresult
So we have a few homepage urls A https://www.website.nl
B https://www.websites.nl/category
C http://www.websites.nl/category What we did: Redirected A with a 301 to B, a redirect from A or B to C is difficult because of the security issue with the ssl certificate. We put the right canonical url (VERSION C) on every version of the homepage(A,B) We only put the canonical urls in the sitemap.xml, only version C and uploaded it to Google Webmastertools We changed all important internal links to Version C We also get some valuable external backlinks to Version C Is there something i missed or i forget to say to Google hey look you've got the wrong url indexed, you have to index version C? How is it possible Google still prefers Version A after doing al those changes three weeks a go? I'am really looking forward to your answer. Thanks a lot in advanced! Greetz Djacko0 -
Proper method of consolidating https to http?
A client has an application area of the site (a directory) that has a form and needs to be secured with ssl. The vast majority of the site is static, and does not need to be secured. We have experienced situations where a visitor navigates the site as https which then throws security errors. We want to keep static visitors on http; (and crawlers) and only have visits to the secure area display as ssl. How is this best accomplished? Our developer wants to add a rule to the global configuration file in php that uses a 301 redirect to ensure static pages are accessed as http, and the secure directory is accessed as https. Is the the proper protocol? Are there any SEO considerations we should make? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | seagreen0