Changed WordPress site to HTTPS... Google still sees it as HTTP

[Ebuzz]

< moved from another location >


Question: I changed a WordPress site over to HTTPS about 5 days ago (all checked and confirmed), but Google has not yet updated my SERP listings to reflect my SSL.

Not only that, when I click on my SERP results, it actually loads my page as HTTP, not HTTPS....

Why is that so? Very confused here. Google can actually do that and override my SSL change?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:33 am (utc) on Dec 1, 2016]

[keyplyr]

After installing certificate and changing all paths to https, continue with these steps (in this order):

• 301 your pages to https in htaccess

• change your sitemap.xml to all https and resubmit to GSC (and Bing)

• add the https version of your site to GSC

• wait a few days

[not2easy]

Using a 301 rewrite in htaccess works fine if the site was not built on WordPress. Since it is a Wordpress site, the change to https needs to be added in your Settings file or even htaccess won't turn it into https, it will only loop. When you first set up your Wordpress site you filled in the canonical URL where WordPress would write your content and until you edit those settings it "can't" be anywhere else. If you paste any https: URL in your browser's address bar and it reverts to http: you will know it needs the settings edited.

[keyplyr]

Thanks not2easy,

"changing all paths to https" would be changing the settings file to the canocal https path... but I was too generic.

[Wilburforce]

Google has not yet updated my SERP listings to reflect my SSL

Even if you do everything suggested, it will take more time.

My site switched to https on 1 November (having ticked all those boxes), but only about 80% of https pages are indexed and listed today, and over 40% of the http version are still showing (i.e. there is some overlap).

Index Status in GSC was fixed in GSC a couple of days ago, but isn't updating in real time (so there is a discrepancy between the results of site:mysite.com and GSC Index Status).

Also, site:mysite.com doesn't show all the https versions unless I repeat the search to Include Similar Pages: clearly in some cases the results favour the historic version of the page.

In the results I have checked for key search terms, position seems generally unaffected (where the https version is showing, it is in roughly the same position the http version was), with the exception of my home page for main key term, which has moved from (http) #39 to (https) #22. However, there has been quite a bit of movement generally for that term, so I don't think the change to https accounts for it, although it is a possibility.

Note that .htaccess will not be available if your site is on an IIS server (in which case you'll need to set up equivalent redirects using IIS, which I don't know much about).