Remove SSL from Google Search results

Question

I am working on a WordPress site that serves up HTTP pages statically. The problem is that some of the pages are shown as HTTPS in Google Search results. For instance, if the search term "Example Press Kit" is entered the search result site link comes up as:

https://example.com/presskit/

We don't have a site SSL certificate, so surfers are being bounced. I have tried everything. Most recently I created a new website in Google WebAdmin for the HTTPS version of our home page. Then, I added site links that should have redirected site links intended for https://example.com/* to http://example.com/*, but it doesn't work! Google still shows a dead link to http://example.com/presskit. I didn't think dead links lasted very long on Google results, but there they are, two weeks later.

Any ideas? A 301 redirect won't work because the site doesn't even allow redirection from HTTPS. It is served by CloudFlare.

Answer 1

Here's an approach to resolve the issues:

• Redirect https:// with a 301 to http://. You can do this with your .htaccess or with WordPress plugins. Just do a search on WordPress plugins or Google. Here's a link that might be helpful to you https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3717799/redirecting-https-to-http-via-htaccess.

• Once you have your redirects setup you should log in to your Google account and request that the https:// URLs be removed. Google will actually do that eventually with the redirect in place, but you can speed it up a bit by doing it manually.