A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting a possible bug with the Yahoo Site Explorer tool.
The webmaster reports that when trying to delete the https URLs of his site from the Yahoo index via Yahoo Site Explorer, it tries to delete the http version as well.
As many SEOs and Webmasters know, having both the https and http version of the same content in the search results can hurt you a bit in terms of link equity. SEOs and Webmasters want to ensure that the links they obtain go specifically to one URL and not two, and since https is a different url then http, search engines may consider them as two different pages with exactly the same content.
So when some webmasters see that Yahoo indexed both pages, they may want to force the removal of one of those pages in Site Explorer. But according to this webmaster, if you try removing https, it will remove the http versions as well.
That brings up an interesting logical observation. If removing an https version, will remove the http version, then maybe Yahoo considers https urls to be the same as http. Maybe https://www.mysite.com/abc.html is the same as http://www.mysite.com/abc.html in the eyes of Yahoo. Maybe all links pointing to the https version are automatically moved over to the http version, in terms of the link popularity component used in Yahoo? Maybe... Or Maybe not?
Maybe, it is a bug in Site Explorer as one member suggests.
I've pointed out to Yahoo that http and https are just different protocols. They suggested that this was a bug in SiteExplorer.
I would think it is a bug and Yahoo doesn't treat https URLs as http.
The quick and easy fix, 301 the https version to http, if possible. But that is not always possible.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
