Http v https Duplicate Issues
-
Hello,
I noticed earlier an issue on my site.
http://mysite.com and https://mysite.com both had canonical links pointing to themselves so in effect creating duplicate content.
I have now taken steps to ensure the https version has a canonical that points to the http version but I was wondering what other steps would people recommend? Is it safe to NOINDEX the https pages? Or block them via robots.txt or both?
We are not quite ready to go fully HTTPS with our site yet (I know Google now prefers this)
Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.
-
Since HTTPS is now a ranking signal, it is better to use the HTTPS version as the canonical. I would personally make every page of the site HTTPS via 301 redirections (or rel=canonical but those can be trickier to implement).
http://site.com --301--> https://site.com
http://site.com/page1/ --301--> https://site.com/page1/
etc.This may require a few changes to the site (internal links shouldn't have unnecessary redirections, adding the HTTPS site to Search Consol (webmaster tools), etc.) so make sure you look around for resources on migration.
If you decide to keep HTTP only, do not noindex or disallow HTTPS because you may have valuable links pointing to HTTPS which help your ranking.
-
Thanks for your replies. Although I'm still confused.
I have areas of the site that are and should be https (checkout etc) and these pages have canonical links pointing to the https version.
The rest of my site however is still on http but the https versions can be accessed via their urls. What I have done today is to add a canonical tag to the https pages to point to the http pages. Is this the correct thing to do to avoid a duplicate content issue?
-
Hi,
I agree with Patrick, if you are not using the https then the safest way to ensure no canonical content is to remove it all together.
If you are using it partially such as checkouts and user areas, then you could 301 redirect the https traffic for the other pages to their https counterparts until you are ready to go full https.
Kind Regards
-
Hi there
If your site is not ready to go fully https, I would hold off on it until you are, unless you have a checkout process or information gathering portion of the site that should be https.
Reason being - the https isn't providing any ranking factor value as it's being canonicalized to the http version of your site, so you're not getting the value.
When you are ready to go https, I recommend taking a look at this Moz resource, specifically the section under SEO checklist to preserve your rankings.
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
-
Duplicate content analysis
Hi all,We have some pages being flagged as duplicates by the google search console. However, we believe the content on these pages is distinctly different (for example, they have completely different search results returned, different headings etc). An example of two pages google finds to be duplicates is below. if anyone can spot what might be causing the duplicate issue here, would very much appreciate suggestions! Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
Examples: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/harborne
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/accountant/harborne0 -
Pages with Duplicate Content
When I crawl my site through moz, it shows lots of Pages with Duplicate Content. The thing is all that pages are pagination pages. How should I solve this issue?
Technical SEO | | 100offdeal0 -
ViewState and Duplicate Content
Our site keeps getting duplicated content flagged as an issue... however, the pages being grouped together have very little in common on-page. One area which does seem to recur across them is the ViewState. There's a minimum of 150 lines across the ones we've investigated. Could this be causing the reports?
Technical SEO | | RobLev0 -
Google Cache issue
Hi, We’ve got a really specific issue – we have an SEO team in-house, and have had numerous agencies look at this – but no one can get to the bottom of this. We’re a UK travel company with a number of great positions on the search engines – our brand is www.jet2holidays.com. If you try ‘Majorca holidays’, ‘tenerife holidays’, ‘gran canaria holidays’ etc you’ll see us in the top few positions on Google when searching from the UK. However, none of our destination pages (and it’s only the destination pages), show a ‘cached’ option next to them. Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=majorca+holidays&oq=majorca+holidays&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l3.2151j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 This isn’t affecting our rankings, but we’re fairly certain it is affecting our ability to be included in the Featured Snippets. Checked and there aren’t any noarchive tags on the pages, example: https://www.jet2holidays.com/destinations/balearics/majorca Anyone have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | fredgray0 -
When is Duplicate Content Duplicate Content
Hi, I was wondering exactly when duplicate content is duplicate content? Is it always when it is word-for-word or if it is similar? For example, we currently have an information page and I would like to add a FAQ to the website. There is, however, a crossover with the content and some of it is repeated. However, it is not written word for word. Could you please advise me? Thanks a lot Tom
Technical SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Possible duplicate content issue with my Blog and archive pages . Any help greatly appreciated
Dear Mozzers, I have been looking at my news section on my eCommerce site and I think I may have a duplicate content issue and wanted some advice on whether I do and if so , how best I handle this. http://www.website.co.uk/news
Technical SEO | | PeteC12
http://www.website.co.uk/news/page:1
http://www.website.co.uk/news/page:2
http://www.website.co.uk/news/page:3
http://www.website.co.uk/news/limit:9999 (This is show all) I also have the ability of showing articles by month : http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/04 (April)
http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/03 (March)
http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/02 (Feb)
http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/01 (Jan) I am wondering if there's a duplicate issue here or not given that I also articles by month as well and if so how best I handle this.? I already do pagination on my news pages (page 1 , page 2) by using rel=next and rel=Prev but I don't have an canconical or anything as yet. I enclose a couple of links if this would help and would appreciate if someone could take a browse. I have a View All link on my homepage for for all news items - http://goo.gl/JPPIvQ I which have a different urls - March 2015 Articles - http://goo.gl/0O1wYD and April 2015 articles - http://goo.gl/GdW2oK On another note, These articles are also linked to from the relevant category landing pages on my website to help with SEO. I have not used H tags on the article links in my landing pages , just displaying the weblink back to the news article.I've done this to try and improve the PR and rankings of my landing pages. Just wondered if anyone has any comments as to whether thats a good or bad idea and whether I could improve it in any way - An example is here (scroll down the page to the pressure washing guides) - http://goo.gl/nnRE49 Thanks Pete0 -
Duplicate Content
Hello guys, After fixing the rel tag on similar pages on the site I thought that duplicate content issue were resolved. I checked HTML Improvements on GWT and instead of going down as I expected, it went up. The duplicate issues affect identical product pages which differ from each other just for one detail, let's say length or colour. I could write different meta tags as the duplicate is the meta description, and I did it for some products but still didn't have any effects and they are still showing as duplicates. What would the problem be? Cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Duplicate Title Tags
Webmaster Tools is showing that I have 78 duplicate title tags. Here is an example of tags they deem to be duplicate: www.lifeinsure.com/blog/life-insurance-trusts/ www.lifeinsure.com/blog/life-insurance-trusts www.lifeinsure.com/life-insurance-trusts/ I have done 301 redirects from any posts beginning with "/blog/" to "/" Any idea why this is happening?
Technical SEO | | rdreich490