How to Resolve Duplication of HTTPS & HTPP URLs?

[CommercePundit]

Right now, I am working on eCommerce website. [Lamps Lighting and More]

I can find out both URLs in website as follow.

HTTP Version:

http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/

HTTPS Version:

https://www.lampslightingandmore.com/

I have check one of my competitor who has implemented following canonical on both pages. Please, view source code for both URLs.

http://www.wayfair.com

** https://www.wayfair.com**

Then, I checked similar thing in SEOmoz website. Why should I not check in SEOmoz because, They are providing best SEO information so may be using best practice to deal with HTTPS & HTTP. LOL

I tried to load following URL so it redirect to home page.

https://www.seomoz.org is redirecting to http://www.seomoz.org

But, following URL is not redirecting any where as well as not set canonical over there.

https://www.seomoz.org/users/settings

I can find out following code on http://www.seomoz.org/robots.txt

**User-agent: ***

** Disallow: /api/user?***

So, I am quite confuse to solve issue. Which one is best 301 redirect or canonical tag? If any live example to see so that's good for me and make me more confident.

[bootleg]

301 redirect doesn't exclude a canonical. If you just want to use one solution, use the 301. There was a YouMoz post about exactly this topic a time ago, have look at it

[RyanKent]

How to Resolve Duplication of HTTPS & HTTP URLs?

Neither a redirect nor a canonical tag is necessary.

HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, etc are various protocols used to access information contained on your web server. The data itself is only instanced once, but you can access the data by using these various protocols. It is not a duplication of data and will not cause any SEO issues.

[bootleg]

But you don't want your https pages crawled if there's the same version available as http. This is mostly a technical issue, but crawling a https site is way more expensive for both bot and server.

[CommercePundit]

My question is in same manner. So, why WayFair have set canonical in website?

[CommercePundit]

Yes, I don't want to crawl my HTTPS pages and don't want to create duplication by HTTPS and HTTP pages.

[CommercePundit]

I want to add similar mind bubble in this question.

http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/

https://www.lampslightingandmore.com/

I have make canonical tag live after discussion over here. But, I have confusion regarding Relative & Absolute URLs.

I am using absolute URLs in canonical tag but, website have relative URLs.

So, Does it create any issue or stop down get benefit of canonical tag?

[gfiorelli1]

I would use no índex for the https version of the site, or block it from robots.txt, if i don't want it to be indexed.

[gfiorelli1]

I believe you're messing things, honestly. 1st > choose a canonical version for your site (www. or not). Sometimes absolute urls can give problems for https version of a site. 2nd > consider if your really want to index the htpps version... If not, put no index or block it via robots.txt. If yes use as canonical tag the http URL of the https page.

[CommercePundit]

So, What about canonical tag. I am too confuse with it. What is ultimate conclusion. Because, I have make it live one website after getting suggestion.

Any eCommerce experience which will help me to understand more. What is best solution in my case. My goal is remove duplication in website and improve crawling rate.

[CommercePundit]

You are right. Because, I have solid confusion after reading article about duplication. I checked my website and found HTTPS and HTTP pages and raising questions in that direction.

[CommercePundit]

Now, Looks fine... Right??

https://www.lampslightingandmore.com/robots.txt

http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/robots.txt

[gfiorelli1]

Yep

[sichristie]

Our solution to this, was to make sure we had a canonical for each and every page pointing to the http:// version.

Secondly https:// was only made available after logging in.

[CommercePundit]

I have set robots.txt file for HTTP and HTTPS versions. You can find out both file above your response. Thanks for your answer.