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I have done redirection from 301k as well as from the .htaccess file. The thing is redirection is working fine but still can not index my HTTPS page. While going through the google search console, I found the problem. But don't know how to solve it. enter image description here

If you search the site:cheapemailvalidation.com, You will get HTTP result not the https result

I wrote a canonical tag as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://cheapemailvalidation.com/index.html"/>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://cheapemailvalidation.com/"/>
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  • How is it related to HTML and google search console?
    – Archit Gargi
    May 7, 2022 at 8:20
  • cheapemailvalidation.com is giving me a https result not a http one. Did you changed it now?
    – Vishal Kalansooriya
    May 7, 2022 at 9:14
  • How many pages are we talking about? If you are doing a 301 redirect Google will pick them up slowly during normal updating by google. You should chose between one of the other canonical tags ... the 2nd one being best practice. May 8, 2022 at 21:15

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Using a site: search is not a valid way of checking what is indexed. Google will show redirecting URLs in a site: search even if they are not indexed (but the redirect target is).

The proper way to check what is indexed is to check the coverage reports in Google search console. You should add "prefix" properties to Google Search Console for your http site as well as your https site and see how many URLs are indexed on each.

You may find that it takes a long time to fully move you indexing from http to https. For me it took more than a year for Google to completely stop indexing all pages on the http site. Every month, Google would move a few more pages over to be indexed with https. See my answer to HTTP to HTTPS: Wait for new sitemap to be indexed? for details.

You should also be aware that moving a site from to https is not always trouble free from an SEO perspective. In addition to indexing going slowly, there are often ranking problems that accompany such a move as well. See Are drops in Google ranking common after switching to https?

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  • +1 your answer but felt canonical tag needed to be addressed. So added another answer. May 8, 2022 at 22:30
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Should only be one canonical on a page.

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://cheapemailvalidation.com/”/>

And each page should have a canonical to the URL it uses for itself not the home page. So the correct canonical for the index.html main page is the URL of the home page. But all other pages have a different canonical.

And you should know that since the http version is redirected it technically no longer exists so the tag is no longer being seen on the http version.

Things to check On Your side

Check the links on your side. Do you have links with href=“http://cheapemailvalidation.com/” instead of “https://cheapemailvalidation.com/” those should be changed.

Do you have links on other sites or social media pointing toward the http version instead of the https version? That you can change. Links on yelp or business directory sites that you could change. Links on blog profiles that you could change? Links on forums or stackexchange that you could change?

Google has been asked this question

Google has a video posted for your question, I can not embed the video; I can only link to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJEXnCKxV88

The associated page on Google search central is

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/301-redirects

and it addresses all methods used by Google to establish which URL will be listed. Note: if using 301 redirects other methods can not be used ... Google addresses other methods because sometimes a 301 redirect can not be used.

BEST PRACTICE short answer, and there is nothing more on your side

If everything is correct, use Google tools to look, then you just need to wait for google.

And note Stephen's answer and Google's the http will be made visible in Google when Google thinks that is the answer you are looking for. So if you are looking for the http you will find them.

So site search is providing the information that google believes you are looking for.

Beyond best practices IE bad practice.

If the pages are receiving traffic from links to the old http. Then you don't need to force google to remove those pages. Doing so will lose that traffic. A forced removal will not pass the benefit made up over the time the page has existed to the new https page. IE RANKING DROP will be self imposed.

To force the removal, again not recommended, turn off the redirect and force the old URL out of Google using the remove tool. Then turn the redirect back on. Doing this will remove all the benefit of the old page and the https will not receive any benefit.

If there is not a compelling reason, mission critical! Serious problem existed with http version ... then do best practice.

If the Critical reason is Google says it is not secure ... note that the new https page will not replace the killed page and if you use Best Practice is will replace the not secure page.

Forced removal is best only done for legal reasons like DMCA, etc.

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  • Good answer, I missed the canonical problems. I'd also add that index.html should never be used in canonical tags, nor in links on your site. It is meant to be entirely invisible. It is there to power the content for the home page (or directory page). If it actually appears in URLs for users, you are doing something wrong. May 9, 2022 at 8:36
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Update: The problem is fixed. Google was just taking time on its side. For future reference, these are the things I did:

  1. Checked if SSL was valid.
  2. Redirect with permanent 301.
  3. Redirect done through .htacess file.
  4. Fixed canonical tags.
  5. Fixed sitemap.xml and robots.txt file.

After doing all this, It took two weeks for google to work on it.

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