Interesting Observation when Moving to HTTPS and Penguin

[JesterMagic]

I recently moved my 13 year old site from http to https. Traffic wise It's had it's ups and downs throughout the years mainly do to Penguin.

A couple of months before the switch I had a page (with lots of good related info to the site topic) which dropped from page 1 #4 spot to page 3-4. This page has been cited and linked to numerous times by major newspapers but it's also had it's share of scrapers and bad links (applied by others). The page had been on page 1 for probably over 6 years.

When I switched to https with 2 days it popped back to it's spot on page 1. I though great it must have been the extra SEO love from now being https. Well within a week and half it has now moved back to page 3-4 (while the rest of the site pages maintained it's positions).

My thoughts on this is while the page is still seen by the main Google Algorithm as perfectly fine and ranked it well, it's being dropped in the ranks by something like Penguin which isn't part of the main algorithm and is a week plus behind in applying it's ranking info.

I have since then applied over 10 more domains to my disavow file that point to this page to see if it makes a difference within hopefully 2 weeks. I will report back if it does or not.

[aristotle]

I have since then applied over 10 more domains to my disavow file that point to this page to see if it makes a difference within hopefully 2 weeks.

Did you create a new disavow file for the https version? Or does you old disavow file still work when the backlinks are re-directed to the new version.

[keyplyr]

Changing protocols has nothing to do with page ranking *except* a promised slight ranking gain. Whether that has been applied yet is unknown.

Did you create a new disavow file for the https version?

No need. You should not use protocol in disallow links.

The links in your disallow file should not be:
http://example.com
- or -
https://example.com.

They should be:
example.com

[JesterMagic]

@Aristotle no I added the same disavow file initially to the https address as I had used for http in Google search console. I then updated it after once the page dropped again.

@keyplyr correct but switching protocols means everything has to be reranked as the ranking change is not instantaneous. It was just interesting to see the page rank normally on page 1 for over a week and then fall back down once I figured penguin algo was reapplied to the page.

The only ranking boost I should possible see is the slight ranking gain you mentioned and the possibility of additional rank because my user login page is now https (which allows users to control notifications and post comments)

[aristotle]

I added the same disavow file initially to the https address as I had used for http in Google search console.

I was just asking to make sure that's what you did.

Also, I think it would be best to delete the old disavow file for the http version, because since the backlinks are re-directed to the new version, you might be disavowing them twice