Arklight.
Costing you rankings and trust

Google told the insecure copy is the master

Your site tells Google the insecure version is the master copy.

How to see it yourself, in a minute

  1. View the page source and search for “canonical”.
  2. If the address in it starts with http:// on a page you reached over https://, this is the fault.

Or paste your address into the free audit, which checks this and seventeen other faults in ten seconds.

Why it matters

A canonical tag pointing at the http version tells Google to rank the insecure copy, which then carries the “Not secure” warning into the search results themselves.

A canonical tag pointing at the http version tells Google to rank the insecure copy, which then carries the “Not secure” warning into the search results themselves, and splits your ranking signals between two copies of every page.

How we fix it

We correct the canonical tags, update the sitemap, and resubmit the secure version in Search Console.

  1. Correct the canonical tags to the https address on every page.
  2. Update the sitemap and resubmit the secure version in Search Console.
  3. Check the redirects so the http copy cannot be indexed again.

How long: An hour.

Questions people ask about this

Is this a big job?
An hour on most sites. It is usually one setting left over from the day the certificate was installed.

People usually find this page by searching

  • canonical tag http https
  • google indexing http version of site
  • duplicate content http https

Has your site got it?

Paste your address. This and seventeen other faults, checked in seconds.

Free, on screen in about ten seconds, no call. We fetch your homepage once, the way a visitor's browser does, and nothing else.

Or fix the lot at once

If the audit finds five or more, a rebuild is usually cheaper than five fixes. Prices are on the page.