You might have recently noticed a strange error in Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool. The error is “HTTPS is invalid and might prevent it from being indexed“.
This error caused massive confusion among the SEO community and website owners.
Don’t worry. Today, I’ll help you understand this error.
HTTPS is invalid and might prevent it from being indexed
Basically, this error does not mean that 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.
Google Official Reply
John Mueller from Google said 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 (For Your Information) and “not an error” that is causing issues in Google Search, he added.
John Mueller of Google has been responding to some of these concerns explaining this is not something to worry about.
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.
John Mueller from Google said on Twitter
What Do SEO Experts Say About This Error?
As Glenn Gabe (SEO Consultant at G-Squared Interactive) 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.”
Conclusion
You don’t have to worry too much about this error. It is just a notice that you will see when you submit new URLs to Google Search Console. The “HTTPS is invalid and might prevent it from being indexed” error will automatically disappear with the passage of time when Google crawl and indexes your page.
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.