Do you Lose SE Ranking Switching to HTTPS?
 

I have an older site from years back that still gets me some traffic I use to feed to other sites. It's still http.

I was wondering if adding an SSL would affect it's SE rankings at all. That site has older links to it pointing to the http version.

Thanks

Switching from http to https probably won't give you any significant SEO boost, ranking can drop temporarily but it usually catches back up soon.

Usually the http is re-directed to https so any drop would be from that action. But traffic should balance out over time.

PS: traffic in general is down 20% since July. :(

Switch to https before Chrome starts blocking all non-https sites.

:2 cents:

Smart advice. It is 2021 and all sites should be https.

:thumbsup

You will lose SE not switching to HTTPS.

It depend on do you do properly use 301 redirect/canonical tag.

The simple answer is if you are on http then you need to switch to https asap.

Providing you have a 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS you will keep all the link juice still. Your ranking should actually improve after you switch to HTTPS.

Ranking will be a little better when https

This :thumbsup

You would have no issues redirecting all http pages to https. Https is not mandatory for any website, unless it has a members area.

However, if this is a website that trades traffic with others, you might have issues with passing the referrer from https to http, so your traffic might not be tracked on your trade partners' side if they haven't updated to https.

An alternative is to keep both http and https (without forcing) if you set up canonical tags to point to https version of your pages.

You gain with https vs http

:2 cents::2 cents:

Thanks for your reply.

My http site is getting google traffic for general terms at the moment but perhaps it would get more if it was https.

Don't say perhaps, just do it. There is nothing good that will happen by sticking with http.

Although the ranking signal that https itself gives will affect SEO minimally, it's the interactions from surfers that can affect SEO more. Like, if someone clicks on the site and is using a browser that will give a warning, that will cause most to click back unless they really want to go to that site. Same with submitting anything or buying anything, not being secure causes more surfers to not use the site.
And it's been long enough that they've increased that signal by now. :upsidedow

And ranking algorithms likely go beyond whether pages are merely http:// or https:// . How many elements in an https:// page are not https:// , such as images, videos, scripts, iframes, style sheets, etc.?

loading first page is always slower on https
because of loading additional certificate

so if you use https and full advantage of it you should also use CDN because changing just to https will make your site load slower...

I lost 90% of my Google traffic when I switched to https a couple years ago. Used to get well over 100k per day.

Site got tons on Google traffic for about 10 years until I switched to https. Still hasn't recovered after almost 3 years.

I've heard stories like this and it's what I've been afraid of. Thanks for sharing.

If you lost ranking switching to https there is two possible reasons:

1) you didn't set it up right
2) Your site was going to get a big penalty with the next core update and the move just set it in motion early

:thumbsup

I was going to ask about #1 but then I got busy and forgot lol.

When I use https checkers online they all say its setup correctly

I'm using a 301 http to https

All http links goto to the correct https version of each page using 301


But Google and my site are messed up even site:domain.com doesnt show my root domain currently

Sometimes it does but most of the time it doesn't. Google links to subpage on some keywords and to the root domain on others.

This has been the case for years since the switch

Certainly. The best idea is to change it asap.

It is normal google behavior. Check for domain.com to see is your homepage indexed.

You can do recovery test - move to a new domain and 301 redirect old page-to-page.
Confirm change of address in GSC.
Wait.

Checking just domain.com my site is the first link but its only a random subpage

Not a good sign.
First result should be homepage always.
Also, how many results there are on google by site:domain.com ?

About 30,300 results (0.19 seconds)

But only 2 actual pages to look through

I can find keywords where domain.com is what is being linked to but other pages its random subpages

Sorry i did not understand correctly:

Only 2 pages of your site;

and other pages is random subpages of your site or others ?

Says 30k results at top but google is only showing 2 pages of links.


1 2 Next

All of the links maybe 15 total (well actually it changed when i searched again)are for my site but very random pages and main root domain not included

Got it.
There exists some kind of google penalty, but from my experience in that case should be 2 to 10 results on google. I got that penalty 3 times.
And i assume your site has much more pages than 15.

I will move to a new domain. Register something similar to current domain - to match your existing backlinks anchors.

I do not know i can post link of another forum here - if not - admins can remove it.
You can read about that penalty here: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/an...y-now.1318746/

As i told, not always should be 4 results exactly on this penalty.

There is no penalty in webmaster tools. Ya there are 1000's of pages. Its a tube site, im only using affiliate clips but ones i cut myself from members area access. Hosting videos myself.

When i search just domain without .com im #1 with my root domain and there is a subpage indented as link 2

In webmaster tools penalty can be shown very rarely.
Google is a big slut.

Well, i can assume it is penalty 100%.

To not get penalty again after weeks-months on new moved domain, you should fix reasons of that.

It can be:

Duplicate content;
Translated content;
Adding many pages daily by auto plugins (embedders);
Until site does not has organic traffic - adding ads, popunders, affiliate links.

Nothing knows exactly the reason of that penalty.

I recovered 2 sites 2 months ago - 1 site got it again after month from recovery.
Now changing content, removed all links, ads and will try again.

Second site started to loose rankings from yesterday - do not know yet it is penalty again, or it is due i changed a little bit content and keywords.
On index everything is good yet.

3rd site recovery started only 1 week ago, so do not know results yet - index also are OK.

did you see my other reply?

When i search just domain without .com im #1 with my root domain and there is a subpage indented as link 2

I did not checked my penalized domains by this, so cannot say how it should be.

HTTPS Is Actually Everywhere

The worst case scenario for non-https:// sites with visitors using these https-only browsers would be losing traffic because the sites are completely blocked. The best case scenario for non-https:// sites with visitors using these https-only browsers would be visitors getting warning pages and higher bounce rates. Putting aside any higher SERP benefits that competitor sites receive for using https:// , SERPs for non-https:// sites will drop due to higher bounce rates.

You might want to check if maybe you got a Google DMCA for your home page and did not notice at the time. Even 100% legit sites sometimes get DMCA notices and your issue sounds like something like that way more than an SSL issue.

I had to check the date on this post. Definitely switch to https.

That's what everyone's saying but it doesn't address the concern. One person replied that they lost lots of Google traffic. I had heard similar stories from others and nobody seems to know for sure one way or the other.

If anything it should improve your ranking.

There are so many factors that influence SERPs. In abshard's case, his loss of rankings and traffic may have been coincidental to switching over to https:// . But nevertheless, win some, lose some. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. In other words, diversify your revenue and earnings through multiple sites and niches.

once switching over to https killed a lot of my search engine positions and it took 1 year, if not 2 to recover, however i probably did something wrong on my end and do not know what excatly...on the other side leaving other sites untouched (http://) did cause no harm to their rankings so i decided to keep my old sites mostly untouched as long as possible

however i do propagate new sites usually with https:// because its just so easy nowadays, and converting later to https:// can be cumbersome

Same here switched about 80 old sites to https last year, about 60% had huge ranking drop and never fully recovered. The rest dropped a little bit or remained the same at best.
but it has to be done eventually.

But, The sites that dropped had no business ranking as good as they did anyway. It almost looked like switching to https made google re-evaluate the sites.

And yes The switch was done correctly.

What’s strange is google mandated this, no? That’s why we switched.

yeah, those saying blindly switch to https, you can only benefit from it have no idea what they are talking about. chances that your SE ranking drops after the switch and will never recover are not negligible. I switched a few sites from my network to https and haven't noticed any benefit, SE ranking was the same or maybe 5-10% lower so I still keep many of my sites on http and they rank good. anyway, if I launch a new site, it's on https already just to make Google and "modern" browsers happier, but my sites don't handle any sensitive data.

I might test a few blogs by going back to http