HTTPS Certificate Expired. Website with https urls now still in index issue.
-
Hi Guys
This week the Security certificate of our website expired and basically we now have to wail till next Tuesday for it to be re-instated.
So now obviously our website is now index with the https urls, and we had to drop the https from our site, so that people will not be faced with a security risk screen, which most browsers give you, to ask if you are sure that you want to visit the site, because it's seeing it as an untrusted one.
So now we are basically sitting with the site urls, only being www...
My question what should we do, in order to prevent google from penalizing us, since obviously if googlebot comes to crawl these urls, there will be nothing.
I did however re-submitted it to Google to crawl it, but I guess it's going to take time, before Google picks up that now only want the www urls in the index.
Can somebody please give me some advice on this.
Thanks
Dave
-
My guess would be the person in charge of procuring and/or installing the cert took a day of vacation today and Monday things are closed for the Labor Day holiday... just guessing : )
That or just working it into their schedule. Sometimes at larger companies the people managing the website for SEO/Content/etc. are not the same people managing things on the back-end.
-
Why is it going to take 4 days for them to fix your SSL? That's the question I would want answered in your position. SSL certificates are easy to replace so what's the holdup here?
-
Hi Dave,
If I were in your shoes, I'd set up a rule to 302 redirect all of your https pages to their http equivalent until Tuesday when you get your cert.
This will make it so if anyone clicks on your https pages in Google's index that they will be brought to the appropriate page and not get a security warning.
The 302 will also tell Google "Hey, this is just a temporary redirect... don't worry about indexing things differently." - because if you get Google to index all of the http versions and if you don't 301 those, you will get a ton of 404 errors. Which is fine... but it gets messy fast.
Hope that helps.
Mike
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
-
How to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google
Hello Mozzers Would you use rel=canonical, robots.txt, or Google Webmaster Tools to stop the search engines indexing URLs that include query strings/parameters. Or perhaps a combination? I guess it would be a good idea to stop the search engines crawling these URLs because the content they display will tend to be duplicate content and of low value to users. I would be tempted to use a combination of canonicalization and robots.txt for every page I do not want crawled or indexed, yet perhaps Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to go / just as effective??? And I suppose some use meta robots tags too. Does Google take a position on being blocked from web pages. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Wrong URLs indexed, Failing To Rank Anywhere
I’m struggling with a client website that's massively failing to rank. It was published in Nov/Dec last year - not optimised or ranking for anything, it's about 20 pages. I came onboard recently, and 5-6 weeks ago we added new content, did the on-page and finally changed from the non-www to the www version in htaccess and WP settings (while setting www as preferred in Search Console). We then did a press release and since then, have acquired about 4 partial match contextual links on good websites (before this, it had virtually none, save for social profiles etc.) I should note that just before we added the (about 50%) new content and optimised, my developer accidentally published the dev site of the old version of the site and it got indexed. He immediately added it correctly to robots.txt, and I assumed it would therefore drop out of the index fairly quickly and we need not be concerned. Now it's about 6 weeks later, and we’re still not ranking anywhere for our chosen keywords. The keywords are around “egg freezing,” so only moderate competition. We’re not even ranking for our brand name, which is 4 words long and pretty unique. We were ranking in the top 30 for this until yesterday, but it was the press release page on the old (non-www) URL! I was convinced we must have a duplicate content issue after realising the dev site was still indexed, so last week, we went into Search Console to remove all of the dev URLs manually from the index. The next day, they were all removed, and we suddenly began ranking (~83) for “freezing your eggs,” one of our keywords! This seemed unlikely to be a coincidence, but once again, the positive sign was dampened by the fact it was non-www page that was ranking, which made me wonder why the non-www pages were still even indexed. When I do site:oursite.com, for example, both non-www and www URLs are still showing up…. Can someone with more experience than me tell me whether I need to give up on this site, or what I could do to find out if I do? I feel like I may be wasting the client’s money here by building links to a site that could be under a very weird penalty 😕
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ullamalm0 -
My website is ranking well on most of keywords. How do I find more keywords in order to drive more traffic to my website?
I have a website which is ranking well on some good keywords ie generic and long tail. It is also ranking for some really competitive keywords. and now getting constant traffic. I want to increase organic traffic to my website. What are the best possible ways to do this? How to research more keywords and how to identify that they will really work? Please help, I am confused.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rishi.ast0 -
Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on. What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Overly-Dynamic URLs & Changing URL Structure w Web Redesign
I have a client that has multiple apartment complexes in different states and metro areas. They get good traffic and pretty good conversions but the site needs a lot of updating, including the architecture, to implement SEO standards. Right now they rank for " <brand_name>apartments" on every place but not " <city_name>apartments".</city_name></brand_name> There current architecture displays their URLs like: http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=overview</client_apartments> http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=floorplans&floorPlanID=121</client_apartments> I know it is said to never change the URL structure but what about this site? I see this URL structure being bad for SEO, bad for users, and basically forces us to keep the current architecture. They don't have many links built to their community pages so will creating a new URL structure and doing 301 redirects to the new URLs drastically drop rankings? Is this something that we should bite the bullet on now for future rankings, traffic, and a better architecture?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredDetroit0 -
Sudden increase in number of indexed URLs. How ca I know what URLs these are?
We saw a spike in the total number of indexed URLs (17,000 to 165,000)--what would be the most efficient way to find out what the newly indexed URLs are?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
SEO Overly-Dynamic URL Website with thousands of URLs
Hello, I have a new client who has a Diablo 3 database. They have created a very interesting site in which every "build" is it's own URL. Every page is a list of weapons and gear for the gamer. The reader may love this but it's nightmare for SEO. I have pushed for a blog to help generate inbound links and traffic but overall I feel the main feature of their site is a headache to optimize. They have thousands of pages index in google but none are really their own page. There is no strong content, H-Tags, or any real substance at all. With a lack of definition for each page, Google see's this as a huge ball of mess, with duplicate Page Titles and too many onpage links. The first thing I did was tell them to add a canonical link which seemed to drop the errors down 12K leaving only 2400 left...which is a nice start, but the remaining errors is still a challenge. I'm thinking about seeing if I can either find a way to make each page it's own blurb, H Tag or simple have the Nav bar and all the links in the database Noindex. That way the site is left with only a handful of URLs + the Blog and Forum Thought?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikePatch0 -
Problem of indexing
Hello, sorry, I'm French and my English is not necessarily correct. I have a problem indexing in Google. Only the home page is referenced: http://bit.ly/yKP4nD. I am looking for several days but I do not understand why. I looked at: The robots.txt file is ok The sitemap, although it is in ASP, is valid with Google No spam, no hidden text I made a request for reconsideration via Google Webmaster Tools and it has no penalties We do not have noindex So I'm stuck and I'd like your opinion. thank you very much A.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon0