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  4. Website accessible on http and https. Is it bad?

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Website accessible on http and https. Is it bad?

On-Page Optimization
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  • CyrilWilson
    CyrilWilson last edited by Jul 19, 2012, 3:55 AM

    We noticed that our website is accessible on:

    http://www.example.com and

    https://www.example.com

    Both the versions have page rank of 4.

    Though on https version we have added canonical tag indicating http:// version as preferred.

    Is this fine or we need to use 301 redirect and let the site be accessible only on http:// version??

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
    • CyrilWilson
      CyrilWilson @MoosaHemani last edited by Jul 19, 2012, 5:40 AM Jul 19, 2012, 5:40 AM

      Yes as we are an eCommerce site, we have login and cart pages as secure. So as per the responses received so far, we should not worry about it.

      -The canonical element is already there for protection

      • Adding no index or restricting through robots can be added precaution

      Thanks everyone for the reply!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MoosaHemani
        MoosaHemani Banned last edited by Jul 19, 2012, 5:40 AM Jul 19, 2012, 5:11 AM

        Depends, If you have secure login system on your website then you cannot put 301 on https because in that case user might not be able to access the login area.

        Adding canonical is fine and you can also restrict from crawling by adding it in to Robots.txt file.

        CyrilWilson 1 Reply Last reply Jul 19, 2012, 5:40 AM Reply Quote 2
        • matbennett
          matbennett last edited by Jul 19, 2012, 5:09 AM Jul 19, 2012, 5:09 AM

          Cyril - I honestly wouldn't worry about this. The vast majority of sites with https behave like this and it doesn't cause a problem.  Your canonical is extra protection against it.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • gcdtechnologies
            gcdtechnologies last edited by Jul 19, 2012, 5:08 AM Jul 19, 2012, 5:08 AM

            Hi Cyril, a 301 redirect would be preferable to a canonical link in this case.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • donford
              donford last edited by Jul 19, 2012, 4:21 AM Jul 19, 2012, 4:21 AM

              Yes 301 is my preferred way to deal with this.

              If you can use

              **if (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && strtolower($_SERVER['HTTPS']) == 'on') {
              echo ''. "\n";
              }**
              

              REF: http://www.seobook.com/archives/001714.shtml

              It is a very common issue, https is needed for sensitive info, but Search Engines don't t need to access.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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