Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
WordPress - How to stop both http:// and https:// pages being indexed?
-
Just published a static page 2 days ago on WordPress site but noticed that Google has indexed both http:// and https:// url's. Usually I only get http:// indexed though.
Could anyone please explain why this may have happened and how I can fix? Thanks!
-
Just one adjustment to this - although I think David's right that the canonical tag can be a good solution. Although Google can index https: fine, the issue is whether you're creating duplicates. If you have duplicates, then it's possible that the https: version could be the one you want as canonical. In this case, it doesn't sound like it, but I just wanted to point that out.
Of course, long-term, you should sort out why these are being created. A desktop crawler like Xenu or Screaming Frog may be the best bet, but I'd hit the WordPress forums, too. Odds are it's a common issue. Typically, it happens when some deeper page (like a shopping cart) on a site is secure, and then the links are all relative ("/about.php", for example). Then, those links get crawled as both secure and non-secure.
Unfortunately, I'm not a WordPress expert, so I can only speak in generalities.
-
Thanks David, I feel like going out to buy some Swedish Fish for some reason now.
-
I actually just did a wealth of research on this topic a few days ago. Without going into the nitty gritty details, if the https is site-wide Google recommends a Rel="canonical" attribute (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394) pointing to the non-secure http version. Google claims it can index https fine, but Matt Cutts said he would "lean towards pointing the canonical to the http version." Also, on the Rel="canonical" page Google says:
If you publish content on both http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish and https://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish, you can specify the canonical version of the page. Create the element:
Add this link to the section of https://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish.
Make sure the canonical is on every page of your site.
Not sure why this may have happened, but it is creating duplicate content, which is why the canonical is necessary.
Hope that helps!
Thanks
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
-
Sudden Indexation of "Index of /wp-content/uploads/"
Hi all, I have suddenly noticed a massive jump in indexed pages. After performing a "site:" search, it was revealed that the sudden jump was due to the indexation of many pages beginning with the serp title "Index of /wp-content/uploads/" for many uploaded pieces of content & plugins. This has appeared approximately one month after switching to https. I have also noticed a decline in Bing rankings. Does anyone know what is causing/how to fix this? To be clear, these pages are **not **normal /wp-content/uploads/ but rather "index of" pages, being included in Google. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Nofollow/Noindex Category Listing Pages with Filters
Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fayfr0 -
How do I redirect the Author archive page in Wordpress?
If you do a search for my name on Google, the first result is the author archive page of my Wordpress blog. I would like to redirect the author page to my "about me" page but cannot add a 301 as the author page is created dynamically in Wordpress. Anyone know how I can do this?
Technical SEO | | richdan0 -
Why google indexed pages are decreasing?
Hi, my website had around 400 pages indexed but from February, i noticed a huge decrease in indexed numbers and it is continually decreasing. can anyone help me to find out the reason. where i can get solution for that? will it effect my web page ranking ?
Technical SEO | | SierraPCB0 -
Investigating a huge spike in indexed pages
I've noticed an enormous spike in pages indexed through WMT in the last week. Now I know WMT can be a bit (OK, a lot) off base in its reporting but this was pretty hard to explain. See, we're in the middle of a huge campaign against dupe content and we've put a number of measures in place to fight it. For example: Implemented a strong canonicalization effort NOINDEX'd content we know to be duplicate programatically Are currently fixing true duplicate content issues through rewriting titles, desc etc. So I was pretty surprised to see the blow-up. Any ideas as to what else might cause such a counter intuitive trend? Has anyone else see Google do something that suddenly gloms onto a bunch of phantom pages?
Technical SEO | | farbeseo0 -
Unnecessary pages getting indexed in Google for my blog
I have a blog dapazze.com and I am suffering from a problem for a long time. I found out that Google have indexed hundreds of replytocom links and images attachment pages for my blog. I had to remove these pages manually using the URL removal tool. I had used "Disallow: ?replytocom" in my robots.txt, but Google disobeyed it. After that, I removed the parameter from my blog completely using the SEO by Yoast plugin. But now I see that Google has again started indexing these links even after they are not present in my blog (I use #comment). Google have also indexed many of my admin and plugin pages, whereas they are disallowed in my robots.txt file. Have a look at my robots.txt file here: http://dapazze.com/robots.txt Please help me out to solve this problem permanently?
Technical SEO | | rahulchowdhury0 -
How do I redirect index.html to the root / ?
The site I've inherited had operated on index.html at one point, and now uses index.php for the home page, which goes to the / page. The index.html was lost in migrating server hosts. How do I redirect the index.html to the / page? I've tried different options that keep giving ending up with the same 404 error. I tried a redirect from index.html to index.php which ended in an infinite loop. Because the index.html no longer exists in the root, should I created it and then add a redirect to it? Can I avoid this by editing the .htaccess? Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | NetPicks0 -
Do search engines still index/crawl private content?
If you have a membership site, which requires a payment to access specific content/images/videos, do search engines still use that content as a ranking/domain authority factor? Is it worth optimizing these "private" pages for SEO?
Technical SEO | | christinarule1