Website Displayed by Google as Https: when all Secure Content is Blocked - Causing Index Prob.

[Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants]

Basically, I have no inbound likes going to https://www.mysite.com , but google is indexing the Homepage only as https://www.mysite.com

In June, I was re included to the google index after receiving a penalty... Most of my site links recovered fairly well.  However my homepage did not recover for its top keywords.

Today I notice that when I search for my site, its displayed as https://

Robots.txt blocks all content going to any secure page.  Leaving me sort of clueless what I need to do to fix this.  Not only does it pose a problem for some users who click, but I think its causing the homepage to have an indexing problem.

Any ideas?  Redirect the google bot only?  Will a canonical tag fix this?

Thx

[LesleyPaone]

I would redirect the https version to http. Then I would make sure that there is a cannonical tag in place, next I would go over my site map and make sure that there isn't an link to the https page in there. After that you should be set, I wouldn't put it in the robots.txt though.

[Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants]

My only concern with doing a redirect is this.  The shopping cart is https: , so if you start the checkout process you will enter https:

If person decides to continue shopping... They will stay in the https, but since the checkout page is restricted to bots, essentially https doesnt exist and shouldnt show on any searches.

The sitemaps is clean, and a canonical is in place...

I have been having some issues with a competitor, is it possible they submitted  https://www.mysite.com/ version of my website knowing that google will prefer this version?

thx for the advise

[LesleyPaone]

If that is the case, then your shopping cart is not "acting right". Https will exist for every page in your site and it shouldn't. What cart are you using? I would redirect everything outside of the payment, cart, and contact pages to non secure. There is a disconnect from what robots files actually do and what people think they do. They are a suggestion, no index means not to add it to the index, but it does not mean don't go on that page. I have spiders on pages that are blocked from them all of the time.

[jesse-landry]

How about changing all of your links from relative to absolute in the HTML? If they're truly only getting there from navigation internally after visiting the shopping cart, this would solve that, yes? Just a thought.

[Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants]

Hmm, see no major changes have been made to the cart.  The website has ranked for 15 years, so the https thing just popped up after the penalty/ re inclusion.

I'm wondering, since the canonical tag was added fairly recently.  Do you think I should just fetch the homepage and submit again?  Or even add a new page, and fetch/crawl/submit that?

Just to get a fresh crawl?  Crawl stats show about 2250 on average daily, so I was expecting this https thing to be gone by now... Regardless of why they chose it to index over my normal link.

thx for the input

[Everett]

Someone could probably have an answer to you within minutes if they had the domain URL available.

RE: Competitive sabotage, I very highly doubt it.

RE: Having just occurred - That is often a sticking-point for no good reason. Do not be concerned so much as to why it wasn't an issue before and focus on how to fix it now. Google's algorithm changes all the time. Your standing in the algorithm changes all the time. Trust can be lost if you get a penalty, even if you get out of it. One external link too many going to https, or one change in the crawl path so Googlebog ends up on the https site via a relative path link... Things can suddenly change for a variety of reasons. However, if you do what is being suggested you are very likely to put this issue behind you.

Here is what I do with eCommerce sites, typically:

• Rel canonical both versions to the http version
• Add a robots.txt block and robots meta noindex tag to shopping cart pages
• Use absolute paths, if possible (e.g. http://www.domain.com/file/ instead of .../file/), especially in your primary navigation and footer links.

If that doesn't work please let us know and we can evaluate the site for you.

Good luck!

[Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants]

Yeah, I have all of that in place.  I found 1 external link from an https , and 1 on my blog that was just an error one of my employees made.  2 Links total, at least thats what I found.  Robots blocking everything you mentioned.  My header uses absolute paths.

I do agree with you on one thing, once kicked, the little things that may not have mattered over the past 15 years all the sudden pop up as problems... At the same time I have heard the complete opposite, people are kicked and then they are right back where they used to be a few weeks after being included.

Competitive sabotage is positively happening, unless a random person who happens to live in the same city my competitor is located just went awol and decided they wanted to spam my offsite forums, attempt to hack the website multiple times, and add me to a spam link rink.

Anyway a webmaster says he has changed the canonical on their end to http , although it hasnt changed yet.  I'm sure this could take a few days or longer to take place.  Hopefully that is the fix, we'll see though and thanks for the advise!