Https Homepage Redirect & Issue with Googlebot Access

[G.Anderson]

Hi All,

I have a question about Google correctly accessing a site that has a 301 redirect to https on the homepage. Here’s an overview of the situation and I’d really appreciate any insight from the community on what the issue might be:

Background Info:
My homepage is set up as a 301 redirect to a https version of the homepage (some users log in so we need the SSL). Only 2 pages on the site are under SSL and the rest of the site is http.

We switched to the SSL in July but have not seen any change in our rankings despite efforts increasing backlinks and out put of content.

Even though Google has indexed the SSL page of the site, it appears that it is not linking up the SSL page with the rest of the site in its search and tracking. Why do we think this is the case?

The Diagnosis:

1) When we do a Google Fetch on our http homepage, it appears that Google is only reading the 301 redirect instructions (as shown below) and is not finding its way over to the SSL page which has all the correct Page Title and meta information.

<code>HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 17:26:24 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.16 (Debian)
Location: https://mysite.com/
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 242
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>

# Moved Permanently

The document has moved [here](https://mysite.com/).

* * *

<address>Apache/2.2.16 (Debian) Server at mysite.com</address></code> 

2) When we view a list of external backlinks to our homepage, it appears that the backlinks that have been built after we switched to the SSL homepage have been separated from the backlinks built before the SSL.

Even on Open Site, we are only seeing the backlinks that were achieved before we switched to the SSL and not getting to track any backlinks that have been added after the SSL switch. This leads up to believe that the new links are not adding any value to our search rankings.

3) When viewing Google Webmaster, we are receiving no information about our homepage, only all the non-https pages. I added a https account to Google Webmaster and in that version we ONLY receive the information about our homepage (and the other ssl page on the site)

What Is The Problem?

My concern is that we need to do something specific with our sitemap or with the 301 redirect itself in order for Google to read the whole site as one entity and receive the reporting/backlinks as one site.

Again, google is indexing all of our pages but it seems to be doing so in a disjointed way that is breaking down link juice and value being built up by our SSL homepage.

Can anybody help? Thank you for any advice input you might be able to offer.

-Greg

[Chris.Menke]

That's a weird looking redirect--I wouldn't expect to see any html in the server headers .  It kind of looks like the data you provided its being take from information directly on the page verses being provided by the server.  Are you sure your redirect is set up correctly on the server?

[G.Anderson]

Hey Chris,

Yeah - not sure why it ended up being displayed like that. Here's a screen shot of it again (this is the Google Fetch result that we receive when we Google Fetch on our http homepage - in our main webmaster account): http://tinypic.com/r/2vnkz9h/5

5

[Chris.Menke]

That appears normal. Sorry, I can't be of any help on this.

[G.Anderson]

Thanks for taking a look anyway Chris.

Does anybody else have any suggestions on what might be going on here?

Cheers,

Greg