I want to move and redirect from https to http without losing ranking on google

[WebJones]

Hi guys,

I'm bulding a new website in Wordpress and my current host runs SSL so the web address begins with https. This is not a viable option on the new server since that would be too expensive.

The old page is recieving loads of organic traffic on google right now, and that would most definately decrease drasticly when moving from https to http, so I tried 301 redirecting with various plugins (i.e easy 301 redirect (https://wordpress.org/plugins/https-redirection/)), but that didn't work without a SSL certificate on my new server.

I've tried editing the .htaccess file, but to no avail - that's probably due to the fact I have no SSL on the new hosting. See some of the solutions I've tried below:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ 
RewriteRule (.*) http://myurl.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Can any of you guys come up with a solution or is my ranking screwed?

Thanks!

[EditorialGuy]

The simplest solution might be to get a CloudFlare account and continue using HTTPS via CloudFlare's "Flexible SSL" option. That way, your URLs wouldn't change. And since Google is now pushing HTTPS, why go back to HTTP?

[not2easy]

Another thing to keep in mind is that WP URLs respond to WP settings and htaccess outside of WP can't make it do otherwise. If you decide you want your URLs to be http: (though I think it is a mistake) you need to put that in your Settings.

[lucy24]

This is one case where you can't simply move to a new host and rely on redirects to carry on. All the redirects in the world won't help if the host server isn't listening on port 443 in the first place.

:: detour to google webmaster docs ::

Oh, nice. Two pages with, at first sight, flatly contradictory information (here changing https to http for auto-linking purposes):
[support.google.com...] (site move, specifically including http-to-https)
[support.google.com...] (change-of-address tool, specifically EXcluding protocol change)

No need to submit a change of address if you are only moving your site from HTTP to HTTPS.

Or, presumably, the other direction. Not only is change-of-address not necessary; it's not even possible. So your only option is to let google discover the change naturally. You could jump-start it by doing Fetch As Googlebot on a few key pages; they'll figure it out. If you've got a sitemap, change it immediately to show the new protocol.

[McMohan]

Request to Mods, this thread is likely going to be very useful to webmasters in similar situation. There is lot of information on the web about http to https redirection, but not so much the reverse. I can see them searching on Google as something like "Redirecting https to http", and this thread might not get returned. Only if the Title were changed to "I want to redirect from https to http without losing ranking on google"

[edited by: goodroi at 11:45 am (utc) on Feb 26, 2015]
[edit reason] Thanks for the suggestion, title is now adjusted [/edit]