Reverting https back to http

[traffik daddy]

Hi,

Does anybody know how to redirect https back to http? Google is still caching the pages as https rather than http which is causing a connection privacy warning in my browser.

I changed it a while back but it is taking a rather long time for the recache of all of the pages.

Cheers
TD

[aakk9999]

I am confused - the privacy warning would not be because of Google cache - even if Google shows HTTPS in SERPs, when clicked, your site should take it to HTTP.

Or are you saying that you reverted to HTTP but have not implemented the redirect? How did you revert, just changed internal links?

[traffik daddy]

Hi, sorry I should have explained it better...

Our web designer removed the SSL certificate, but a lot of https pages are still indexed in Google in place of the http pages. This was over two weeks ago, and if I click on one of the indexed https pages my browser just issues a certificate warning rather than redirecting.

I think we have found the problem anyway, Avast Antivirus could be causing it on our machines. We are looking into it now.

My problem with Google was the https pages seem to be taking a while to swap over to the http pages. I have done a fetch with direct links in Webmaster Tools, submitted a new sitemap, canonical tags are pointing to http, yet hardly any pages have swapped over. I'm not sure why it is taking so long?

It is not a huge website, it is just a clients website of 60+ pages.

[martaay]

Whatever reason for the move back to http from https - if the move is to be permanent, I'd be using the google change of address tool: [support.google.com...] + this page includes other guidelines for you to follow

[aakk9999]

Removing certificate is not enough and browser will not redirect without being told so by your server!

You absolutely need to redirect all URLs from HTTPS back to HTTP - the response code from the server must be 301 redirect with the location being http version of the URL requested (of course if you are returning 404 or have further redirects, your server should first work out the final location of requested URL and then either reply with 301 and the correct http target or return 404.

I would try to do this sooner rather than later otherwise you could find your ranking and traffic taking a hit.

[bumpski]

link rel=canonical to http:// will work with time.

[Vimes]

this should help you

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

[webmasterworld.com...]

Vimes

[robzilla]

Reinstall the certificate until you get this sorted out.

Whatever reason for the move back to http from https - if the move is to be permanent, I'd be using the google change of address tool: [support.google.com...] + this page includes other guidelines for you to follow

If you'd read the guidelines you're referring to, you'd have found that you should only...

... Use the Change of address tool when your site move entails a domain or subdomain change, such as changing from [fish.example-petstore.com...] to http://example.com or [example-petstore.com....]
Note: The tool does not currently support the following kinds of site moves: subdomain name changes, protocol changes (from HTTP to HTTPS), or path-only changes.