Landing pages showing up as HTTPS when we haven't made the switch
-
Hi Moz Community,
Recently our tech team has been taking steps to switch our site from http to https. The tech team has looked at all SEO redirect requirements and we're confident about this switch, we're not planning to roll anything out until a month from now.
However, I recently noticed a few https versions of our landing pages showing up in search. We haven't pushed any changes out to production yet so this shouldn't be happening. Not all of the landing pages are https, only a select few and I can't see a pattern. This is messing up our GA and Search Console tracking since we haven't fully set up https tracking yet because we were not expecting some of these pages to change.
HTTPS has always been supported on our site but never indexed so it's never shown up in the search results. I looked at our current site and it looks like landing page canonicals are already pointing to their https version, this may be the problem.
Anyone have any other ideas?
-
What I would do is the following: change the rel canonical back, remove the https version from Search Console (you need to add the https version of the website as well in Search Console) and then fetch and reindex the http version (also from Search Console). So basically, help Google understand this mistake and go back to the http version. Also, check your sitemaps and be sure that you are not including https links there. Hope this helps.
-
Hi Christian,
Thanks for the reply. HTTPS rel canonical were added to live pages, as I expected this is why some are showing up in the search results. It's a problem through for GA and Search console tracking since we haven't made the switch server side yet and currently http pages don't redirect to their https version yet. So we're seeing no sessions for our http versions.
If I change the rel=canonical back to http on the live site I'm guessing the non secure pages will show up again after being crawled?
Thanks!
-
Hi! I don't seem to understand the question. Is it that you added a https rel canonical to live pages and are wondering why it is indexed? If so, this is the normal behavior since your website already supports https and you have linked to it. The reason why only a few landing pages show up as https for now might be related to how and when the crawler got there. I hope I didn't totally misunderstand the question.
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
-
SERP Review Features show on a non-product page?
When reviewing my campaign's SERP Features, I notice that one of my competitors is gaining a lot of Review Features that I'm missing. I'm ranking high for the keywords that are showing the review features, but not on my product page. I'm ranking for those keywords on blogs and other pages. Is there a way to show for those review features as I currently have it, or should I be trying to rank for those keywords on my product page? I appreciate any insight into this situation.
Technical SEO | | LearningStuff0 -
Rel=canonical on landing page question
Currently we have two versions of a category page on our site (listed below) Version A: www.example.com/category • lives only in the SERPS but does not live on our site navigation • has links • user experience is not the best Version B: www.example.com/category?view=all • lives in our site navigation • has a rel=canonical to version A • very few links and doesn’t appear in the SERPS • user experience is better than version A Because the user experience of version B is better than version A I want to take out the rel=canonical in version B to version A and instead put a rel=canonical to version B in version A. If I do this will version B show up in the SERPS eventually and replace version A? If so, how long do you think this would take? Will this essentially pass page rank from version A to version B
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Merging sites, ensuring traffic doesn't die
Wondering if I could get a second opinion on this, please. I have just taken on a new client, they own about 6 different niched car experience websites (hire an Aston Martin for the day, type thing). All the six sites they have seem to perform reasonably well for the brand of car they deal with, the average DA of the sites is about 24. The client wishes to move all of these different manufacturers into one site and have sections of the site, they can then also target more generic experience day type keywords. The obvious way of dealing with this move would be to 301 the old sites to the relevant places on the new site and wait for that to rank. However, looking at the backlinks profile of the niched sites, they seem to have very few backlinks and i feel the reason they are ranking so well for all the individual manufacturers is because they all feature the name in the domain. Not exact match, but the name is there. If I am thinking right, with the 301 we want to tell Google page x is now page y, index this one instead. Because the new site has a more generic name I don't think it will enjoy any of the domain keyword benefits which are helping the sub sites, and as a result I expect the rankings and traffic to drop (at least in the short term). Am I reading this correct. Would people use a 301 in this case? The easiest thing to do would be to leave the 6 sub sites up and running on their own domain and launch the new site to run alongside them, however the client doesn't want this. Thanks, Carl
Technical SEO | | GrumpyCarl0 -
My landing pages just dropped to zero in webmaster tools
According to google webmaster tools my landing pages just dropped from 1300 impressions 2 days ago to zero for the past 2 days. Have attached snippet of graph, URL of website is http://www.cheapcentralheating.co.uk - I have no idea whats happened here, and if anyone can advise or help I would be extremely grateful. landing_pages.jpg
Technical SEO | | nicklemonpromotions0 -
When testing the on page report I'm having a few problems
First of all, is this test checking my seo optimization over the whole website or just over one site: Ie. when I type in www.joelolson.ca...is it also checking sites like www.joelolson.ca/realtorresources... Secondly. I have found that it won't find specific websites on my page and says they can't be found when clearly they exist
Technical SEO | | JoelOlson0 -
I am getting an error message from Google Webmaster Tools and I don't know what to do to correct the problem
The message is:
Technical SEO | | whitegyr
"Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.whitegyr.com/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team" I have always tried to follow Google's guidelines and don't know what I am doing wrong, I have eight different websites all getting this warning and I don't know what is wrong, is there anyone you know that will look at my sites and advise me what I need to do to correct the problem? Website with this warning:
artistalaska.com
cosmeticshandbook.com
homewindpower.ws
montanalandsale.com
outdoorpizzaoven.net
shoes-place.com
silverstatepost.com
www.whitegyr.com0 -
What is the most likely reason we aren't ranking #1 for our keyword.
So we are targeting a keyword and we are ranking 2nd for it. Another company is ranking number 1. What is the best element to target for us to improve into position number one? Page authority: them 41, us 40. mozRank: them 5.52, us 3.38. mozTrust: them 5.86, us 5.58. mT/mR: them 1.1, us 1.4. Total Links: them 6571, us 68. Internal Links: them 1138, us 1. External Links: them 5431, us 63. Followed Links: them 6569, us 64. Nofollowed Links: them 2, us 4. Linking Root Domains: them 25, us 41. Broadkeyword usage in page title: them YES, us YES. KW in domain: them no, us partial. Exact anchor test links: them 161, us 21. % of links with exact anchor text: them 2%, us 30%. Linking Root domains with exact anchor text: them 2, us 11. Domain Authority: them 41, us 40. Domain MozRank: them 3.7, us 4.5. Domain MozTrust: them 3.8, us 4.5. External links to domain: them 22574, us 217. Linking root domains: them 50, us 48. Linking C-blocks: them 46, us 42. Tweets: them 1, us 12. FB shares: them 6, us 26.
Technical SEO | | Benj250 -
What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm. They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site. I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
Technical SEO | | JasonCooper0