HTTPS sitewide move has resulted in huge rankings drop...
-
Hi all,
An e-commerce site has recently moved protocol to https sitewide.
The site ranked page one for some great terms and now appear to be page 2 or below. Brand terms seem unphased and are still very strong, on both Google and Bing.
The following has been done;
- Everything 301'd from http to https
- Sitemap Edited
- Updated Webmaster Tools
- Robots.txt edited
- Crawled and Fetched all pages daily.
- Checked Paged are all follow,index.
- PPC Ads mass updated to new url's.
Most terms were ranked 1 - 9 on Bing, and Page 1/2 on Google.
HTTPS upgrade was done less than one week ago. The site is not payday loan related, nor was it hit by latest panda escapades. Everything on the site is relevant to the content.
Has anybody else been in this position, what else can be done?
I'd appreciate any help and advice. Thank You
-
Thanks very much for your feedback! It helps a lot.
-
It's very hard to pinpoint whether doing it had a positive affect. I'm going to say if it did, it was extremely minimal. It's 'nice' for site visitors to see the site is verified I guess.
I'd still do it again, as Google said it's worthwhile. Just a shame it's taken so long, and we couldn't measure success of failure.
I've done it on another site since, which was far smoother, rankings and traffic remained the same though.
-
Thanks for that! It helps me understand what the risks may be in doing this now. Am I wrong in deducing you had a long-term positive gain overall?
Thanks!
-
Hi,
It took roughly 4 months to fully recover.
The dent in the graph doesn't look that significant, but the spike towards Christmas is way into the 300,000 mark..
Paid traffic paid a valuable part in keeping traffic steady (as you can see).
Regards
Alex
-
Hiya,
I wondered if your site has recovered fully now and how long it took for it to do so?
Many thanks!
-
5 weeks on, and the site is still recovering.
Obviously during this time Google announced its preferred status to HTTPS sites too!
Only yesterday did we return top for the brand name,.
To put a figure on how much damage has been caused on this matter, organic traffic (Google only) was down 35%, and organic revenue (Google only) Y-O-Y last month was down 60%.
Would love to know the reasoning for the huge drop in rankings, and the recovery time period to expect.
-
This indicates to me that something is wrong besides waiting for a 301 redirect situation to be properly indexed / acknowledged. This is not currently a ranking factor, but there have even been murmurings of Googlers favouring HTTPS sites - it's certainly a plus to be on HTTPS URLs in Matt Cutts' opinion - http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ssl-ranking-18256.html
At the very least, the move should not hurt you, especially not for brand terms two weeks later.
Unfortunately I am really not sure what the problem is likely to be, assuming that everything about the redirection has been done by the book and you are not seeing any errors on that front. A continued drop might warrant a request for reconsideration, but that is a last-ditch effort in most cases.
-
One week on and brand terms have gone the exact same way. We're on page 2 for our brand, yet dominated page one with 5-6 links before this https move. With absolutely no glimmer of hope for our organic terms.
None of the keywords which were been worked on (and getting results with) are getting anywhere,
I know and understand it is a waiting game to get the rankings back, however it is painful to see the rankings in such a state.
Can anybody recommend further steps to give the site a boost?
This article from Rand fascinates me, and gives some potential light at the end of the tunnel for a quick fix! http://moz.com/rand/queries-clicks-influence-googles-results/
Thanks in advance
-
It will cause duplicated content, that is why you add the canonical tag that points to the https site. What you are doing is waiting for Google to react to your address change and covering your bases while you are waiting. Google is big, things like address changes don't happen overnight, they could take weeks to fully index correctly. Risking a little duplicate content to me is worth not having the traffic drop off of a site.
-
One week ago. Would that not cause duplicate content? I thought about doing it that way round, but was a little worried about duplicating the whole site. (In hindsight it couldn't have been any worse)
Thank you for your reply.
-
How long has it been since you switched? It might be a little late now, but the way I always recommend doing it to my clients is to activate the https site and leave the http one active for a few weeks. That way you can have the canonical on the http point to https. Google does not act immediately on things, you have to give them time to adjust and I feel this works best.
-
Hi Samuel,
Thanks for replying, I have however been on the above links before posting.
The points John Mueller mentioned were previously addressed, yet rankings have taken a colossal turn for the worse.
In the second link you posted i'm hoping this statement comes true!
"In our experience, even when 301's are correctly executed, we see a short term fall back (7-30) days and then about a 90% carry through after that period for about 90 days and then back to full strength. "Alex
-
Search Engine Roundtable has an article on the topic here that cites a Google+ discussion with Google's John Muller here.
Some potential issues that are discussed:
- don't forget the http->https redirect & other canonicalization things
- look into HSTS
- list the https site separately in webmaster tools (it's a different site)
- make sure the infrastructure can handle the higher load (SSL, caching, etc)
- check out the differences wrt. caching
I'd also look at past Q&As here and here. I hope this helps -- good luck!
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
-
Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website?
Hi, Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Keyword Ranking Fluctuations
Hi Guys I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating. The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5. What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets. They are all ranking fine. It is only 1 keyword. The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference? The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories. The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange. What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword. If anyone has any ideas or feedback that would be great! Thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Outranking a definition result
Hello, I was just asked to help rank a keyword that has fairly low competition but the #1 result is a definition.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodeCadet
I do not want to post the keyword here but for an example type in "resting" and you will see that Google returns a definition of the word. Now, lets say the result directly below the webster definition is a company with the name "Resting". What type of tactics would you employ to outrank a definition?! My first guess would be that I should establish this brand with Google by creating a Google Places listing for it. What else could I possible do? Should I just build standard relevant back links and optimize the content as normal? Thanks in advance!0 -
Is it normal to initially rank low in the SERPs, then over time gain rank?
We just released a very targeted page for a specific item about 18 hours ago. For the main keyword as well as multiple variations, we currently are ranking around # 40 to # 50 depending on what the exact query is. Is it normal to initially rank lower in the SERPs and then as the page ages, gain? Thank you for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1231 -
Long tail rankings
Hi everybody. We've been working with http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/ for some time now. Rankings for broad terms such as 'lawn mowers' and 'lawnmowers' are superb, and we're pretty happy. Bizarrely though, rankings for products are very poor. For example this page - http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/product/honda-hrg465sd - is currently 17th for 'Honda HRG465SD IZY'. We've done lots of work onsite, clearing up duplicate content, improving copy and tidying up URLs. However, none of this seems to have had a major impact on the product pages. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Serps drop on 21st
Hi, This is my website: http://goo.gl/fl5a5 Earlier i used to be on #1 and #3 page results for most of my results. But after 21st dec, my results went to 10th and 13th page of results. Is it due to latest panda update? http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-maybe-16121.html If so, can you guys examine my website and provide me your suggestions please... PS: i have followed only genuine kinda link buildings, my content is 100% unique. Will be waiting for your replies.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegitt0 -
Internal page ranking
If I have a domain: Example.com I want this domain to rank for several keywords. I build a page on the domain called Example.com/glasses If I SEO the page Example.com/glasses with backlinks etc... will that URL come up on google or will it simply bring Example.com up on the SERPS. If I have three keywords, should I make a subpage for each page and SEO that page? Will that make the domain rank for all three keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Dropped ranking - Penguin penalty or duplicate content issue?
Just this weekend a page that had been ranking well for a competitive term fell completely out of the rankings. There are two possible causes and I'm trying to figure out which it is, so I can take action. I found out that I had accidentally put a canonical on another page that was for the same page as the one that dropped out of the rankings. If there are two pages with the same canonical tag with different content, will google drop both of them from the index? The other possibility is that this is a result of the recent Penguin update. The page that dropped has a high amount of exact anchor text. As far as I can tell, there were no other pages with any penalties from the Penguin update. One last question: The page completely dropped from the search index. If this were a Penguin issue, would it have dropped out completely,or just been penalized with a drop in position? If this is a result of the conflicting canonical tags, should I just wait for it to reindex, or should I request a reconsideration of the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gametv0