Https Version of Homepage in SERPS

[UnderRugSwept]

The https version of our homepage appears in Google's SERPs. We have rel canonical on the page pointing to the http version. We have a redirect in our htaccess that sends https to http.

I thought this was just a fluke and it would be fixed by the next crawl, but it's been like this for a few weeks now. Not only that, but we're losing rank a bit and I'm afraid there's a correlation.

Has this ever happened to anyone?

[ORob]

Hi Marisa,

I had to dig, but is the site you are speaking about the one in your profile? When I check the header status of the https page I get a 200, meaning the 301 isn't being recognized. If you are referring to a different site please disregard.

[UnderRugSwept]

I am referring to the one in my profile. I will check that out and get back to you. Thanks.

[UnderRugSwept]

The redirect is back now (don't know what happened) but now when I click on the order page, which is supposed to be https, it redirects it to http even though I have the following code in the htaccess:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/order.html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/cgi-bin/order.cgi

[ORob]

Hi Marisa, glad you were able to get the redirect set back up. Hopefully someone can help you with this secondary issue. htaccess can be pretty complex!

Sorry I couldn't be of more help in that area.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Marisa,

I'm no .htaccess expert, but that code looks a little wonky to me. Is it complete? I see lots of rewrite conditions, but not rewrite rules.

Second problem, when I run the https version through a server header check, it looks like the redirect serves a 302 status code, which indicates a temporary move and passes no link juice. Oh no!

So the first thing I would do is to make sure that any Rewrite rules in your htaccess file contain a 301 directive like this: [R=301,L]

For Example, the following might work:

<code>RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !^on$
RewriteRule (.*) http://yourdomain/$1 [R=301,L]</code>

So the first thing I would do is to make sure that any Rewrite rules in your htaccess file contain a 301 directive like this: [R=301,L]

Another option to consider is making your entire site secure to https. Many websites are moving this way, and Google has no problem crawling and ranking these sites appropriately. The important thing is to make sure you act consistently, and get those 302's solved!

It is odd that you have proper canonical tags and Google still displays the https version, but after you get this sorted out things will likely resolve themselves.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

[UnderRugSwept]

Thanks for the code. It worked! And thanks for providing the link to the server header check so I could properly test it.