Tips to prevent search engine crawling for HTTPS (Secure) version of the eCommerce Website.
If the Search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo! …etc. having two version of the website one is SSL (https://) and second is NON-SSL (http://):
http://www.example.com/
https://www.example.com/
As per last Google panda update if your website will get cached in Google with both http and https, then your website will be penalized and will effect badly in ranking (major rank dropped).
Solution 1:
Use Rel=”Canonical” Meta Tag:
Add a rel="canonical" link to the <head> section of the non-canonical version of each HTML page.
A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content.
i.e.
Your homepage (https://www.example.com/) <HEAD> section has:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/”>
Your internal page (https://www.example.com/product.php) <HEAD> section has:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php”>
Read more about Canonical Meta Tag – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
Solution 2: (We are highly recommended this solution)
Use two different robots.txt file for http and https version of the website.
Step 1:
Please create two robots.txt file with specific directives.
- robots.txt
User-agent: *
Allow: /
- robots_https.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Step 2:
Please open .htaccess file
Please put below same code in the .htaccess file.
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_https.txt
Suppose, if you are NOT able to use mod_rewrite directives
Then,
Please put below code in <head> section of the entire website which will be recognized as a meta tag if your HTTPS server variable is set and its value is ON.
<?php
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && strtolower($_SERVER['HTTPS']) == 'on') {
echo '<meta content="noindex,follow">'. "n";
}
?>
If you face any problem to set up this task then feel free to contact us or make comment here. We will definitely help you to short out the things.
Please check out our eCommerce SEO services which helps to build online visibility and increase online sales.
About Hemant Parmar
Hemant Parmar is an eCommerce expert and a keen Magento consultant who specializes in meeting the needs of businesses in the e-commerce space. Years in the eCommerce market make him a perfect choice for sharing his expertise on eCommerce and Magento 2 development. He believes that customers need to be met no matter how challenging it might be.
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