Https-pages still in the SERP's
-
Hi all,
my problem is the following: our CMS (self-developed) produces https-versions of our "normal" web pages, which means duplicate content.
Our it-department put the <noindex,nofollow>on the https pages, that was like 6 weeks ago.</noindex,nofollow>
I check the number of indexed pages once a week and still see a lot of these https pages in the Google index. I know that I may hit different data center and that these numbers aren't 100% valid, but still... sometimes the number of indexed https even moves up.
Any ideas/suggestions? Wait for a longer time? Or take the time and go to Webmaster Tools to kick them out of the index?
Another question: for a nice query, one https page ranks No. 1. If I kick the page out of the index, do you think that the http page replaces the No. 1 position? Or will the ranking be lost? (sends some nice traffic :-))...
thanx in advance
-
Hi Irving,
yes, you are right. The https login page is the "problem", other pages that I visit after are staying on https, as all the links on these page are https links. So you could surf all the pages on the domain in a https mode, if you visited the login page before
I spoke to our it department about this problem and they told me it would take time to program our CMS different. My boss then told me to find another, cheaper solution - so I came up with the noindex,nofollow.
So, do you see another solution whithout having to ask our it department again? They< are always very busy and almost have no time for nobody
-
Hi Malcolm,
thankx for the help. Before we put the noindex, nofollow on these pages, I thought about using the rel=canonical.
To be honest, I did not choose rel=canonical because I think that the noindex,nofollow ia a stronger sign for Google, and that the rel=canonical is more like a hint, which G does not always follow... but sure, i can be wrong!
You are saying that the noindex could end worse. The https-pages only contain links to https-pages, think of these pages like "normal" pages, same content, link structure etc. etc. Every URL just is a https, internal, external....
So I thought the noindex,nofollow would not hurt the http pages, because they cannot be found on the https ones - what do you think?
-
Is there a reason you're supporting both http and https versions of every page? If not, 301 redirect to either http or https for each page. I'd only leave pages that need to be secure as https, e.g. purchase pages. Non-secure pages are generally a better user experience in terms of load time since the user can use cached files from previous pages and non-encrypted pages are more lightweight.
If you're out to support both for those secure users who like https everywhere, I'd go with Malcolm's solution and rel canonical to the version you'd like to have indexed rather than using noindex nofollow.
-
do you have absolute links on your site that are keeping https?
For example, if you go to a secure login page and then click a homepage navigation link on the secure https page do you see the homepage link going back to http or staying on https?
That is usually the cause of this problem you should look into that. I would not manually request removal of the pages in WMT i would just fix the problem and let google update it itself.
-
have you tried canonicalising the http version?
Using a noindex nofollow rule could end up being worse as you are telling Google not to follow the pages or index them and this will include both http and https.
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
-
Our site recently switched from http to https. Do I still need to setup a redirect for the incoming links pointing to http?
Our site recently switched from http to https. If you type in the http://www.websitename.com then it will automatically go to https://www.websitename.com ... my question is... do I still need to create a redirect in the htaccess file to ensure we don't lose all the links currently pointing to the http version of the website?
Technical SEO | | ninel_P0 -
Bigcommerce only allows us to have https for our store only, not the other pages on our site, so we have a mix of https and http, how is this hurting us and what's the best way to fix?
So we aren't interested in paying a thousand dollars a month just to have https when we feel it's the only selling point of that package, so we have https for our store and the rest of the site blogs and all are http. I'm wondering if this would count as duplicate content or give us some other unforeseen penalty due to the half way approach of https being implemented. If this is hurting us, what would you recommend as a solution?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Old pages - should I remove them from serps?
Hi guys, I need an advice from you, a recommendation. I have some old LPs from old campaigns, around 70 pages indexed on Google, campaigns that are not available anymore. I have removed them from my DB, but they still remained on server so Google still sees them as URLs on my site, witch I totally agree. What should I do with this pages? Should I remove them completely? (url removal tool) or use rel=canonical? How will this affect my domain authority and rankings? This pages doesn't bring traffic any more, maybe a view now and then, but overall this pages don't bring traffic.
Technical SEO | | catalinmoraru0 -
When do you use 'Fetch as a Google'' on Google Webmaster?
Hi, I was wondering when and how often do you use 'Fetch as a Google'' on Google Webmaster and do you submit individual pages or main URL only? I've googled it but i got confused more. I appreciate if you could help. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Rubix1 -
Robots.txt crawling URL's we dont want it to
Hello We run a number of websites and underneath them we have testing websites (sub-domains), on those sites we have robots.txt disallowing everything. When I logged into MOZ this morning I could see the MOZ spider had crawled our test sites even though we have said not to. Does anyone have an ideas how we can stop this happening?
Technical SEO | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Should I change by URL's
I started with a static website and then moved to Wordpress. At the time I had a few hundred pages and wanted to keep the same URL structure so I use a plugin that adds .html to every page. Should I change the structure to a more common URL structure and do 301 directs from the .html page to the regular page?
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
What's the best URL Structure if my company is in multiple locations or cities?
I have read numerous intelligent, well informed responses to this question but have yet to hear a definitive answer from an authority. Here's the situation. Let's say I have a company who's URL is www.awesomecompany.com who provides one service called 'Awesome Service' This company has 20 franchises in the 20 largest US cities. They want a uniform online presence, meaning they want their design to remain consistent across all 20 domains. My question is this; what's the best domain or url structure for these 20 sites? Subdomain - dallas.awesomecompany.co Unique URL - www.dallasawesomecompany.com Directory - www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/ Here's my thoughts on this question but I'm really hoping someone b*tch slaps me and tells me I'm wrong: Of these three potential solutions these are how I would rank them and why: Subdomains Pros: Allows me to build an entire site so if my local site grows to 50+ pages, it's still easy to navigate Allows me to brand root domain and leverage brand trust of root domain (let's say the franchise is starbucks.com for instance) Cons: This subdomain is basically a brand new url in google's eyes and any link building will not benefit root domain. Directory Pros Fully leverages the root domain branding and fully allows for further branding If the domain is an authority site, ranking for sub pages will be achieved much quicker Cons While this is a great solution if you just want a simple map listing and contact info page for each of your 20 locations, what if each location want's their own "about us" page and their own "Awesome Service" page optimized for their respective City (i.e. Awesome Service in Dallas)? The Navigation and potentially the URL is going to start to get really confusing and cumbersome for the end user. Think about it, which is preferable?: dallas.awesomcompany.com/awesome-service/ www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/awesome-service (especially when www.awesomecompany.com/awesome-service/ already exists Unique URL Pros Potentially quicker rankings achieved than a subdomain if it's an exact match domain name (i.e. dallasawesomeservice.com) Cons Does not leverage the www.awesomecompany.com brand Could look like an imposter It is literally a brand new domain in Google's eyes so all SEO efforts would start from scratch Obviously what goes without saying is that all of these domains would need to have unique content on them to avoid duplicate content penalties. I'm very curious to hear what you all have to say.
Technical SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
What's the best canonicalization method?
Hi there - is there a canonicalization method that is better than others? Our developers have used the
Technical SEO | | GBC0