Confusion Over Google Search Console’s HTTPS Is Invalid And May Forestall It From Being Listed

Last week, Google rolled out a new Search Console report for HTTPS, and with that came a lot of confusion around a specific error. The error was “HTTPS is invalid and might prevent it from being indexed.” This shows in the URL inspection tool, which was part of this upgrade.

John Mueller from Google did say this morning on Twitter that they dug through these reports and will be updating the warnings to make them “less scary.” While the errors are correct, he said, the warnings are just an FYI and “not an error” that is causing issues in Google Search, he added.

Here is one of many screenshots of this error:

This does not mean the URL won’t be indexed, it means Google has never seen the URL, or has seen the URL but not crawled it yet. Google may also be indexing the HTTP version of that URL instead for the time being.

There are countless tweets and threads with confusion about this specific error. Here are some threads on Google Webmaster Help, Black Hat World and on partitter.

John Mueller of Google has been responding to some of these concerns explaining this is not something to worry about. He said on Twitter “HTTPS would not prevent a page from being indexed. It might prevent it from being indexed as HTTPS, but we’d still index it as HTTP. We just don’t index all pages on sites, that’s expected, and independent of HTTPS status.”

HTTPS would not prevent a page from being indexed. It might prevent it from being indexed as HTTPS, but we’d still index it as HTTP. We just don’t index all pages on sites, that’s expected, and independent of HTTPS status.

— 🌽〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉🌽 (@JohnMu) September 15, 2022

Here is where John said they will be changing things to make it clearer:

Thanks! We dug through a bunch of these reports, and we’ll work on improving the UI to make this look less scary. When a page is not indexed, we don’t evaluate the HTTPS (it’s not blocking). For very new pages, it’s similar. We’ll make this more of a “FYI” and not an error.

— 🌽〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉🌽 (@JohnMu) September 19, 2022

yes This can show up for unindexed or freshly indexed pages. We’ll work on improving the UI to make it less scary. It’s not blocking indexing here, HTTPS is just not properly evaluated there yet.

— 🌽〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉🌽 (@JohnMu) September 19, 2022

As Glenn Gabe pointed out, if you look at the help documentation this can mean “Google has never seen the URL, or has seen the URL but not crawled it yet.”

“HTTPS Not Evaluated” is causing mass confusion for site owners and SEOs. Reminds me of Discovered, not indexed… 🙂

Note, Google just might not have crawled the urls yet -> “Google has never seen the URL, or has seen the URL but not crawled it yet.” https://t.co/YoRrW8utku pic.twitter.com/q74xJG7dEq

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 16, 2022

So I wouldn’t worry too much about this error.

If you see the pages are not being indexed, I doubt it is related to this error – I would suspect it is more of a quality issue.

Forum discussion at Twitter.