How can I Revert Back to HTTPS to an HTTP Site
2017 was the year of website owners finally making the move from a vulnerable HTTP site to a secured HTTPS website. The primary reason for this was Google’s ongoing campaign for security, as well as all the huge, large-scale hackings that happened all through the year. Of of course, SSL has been a search ranking aspect from 2014 onwards, albeit a minor one. – Revert Https Non Ssl
There was also a time where website owners saw rankings declines or no improvement in any way, and then deciding the issues they experienced in using SSL were not worth the trouble and then reversing the changes. I think it was a mistake. actually certain of my websites experienced a rise in ranking after when they switched to SSL however I realize that each website is different. – Revert Https Non Ssl
Motives to Change your mind
There are many possible reasons to consider reversing the change of HTTP and HTTPS. Let’s look at these for a minute. I’m betting that at least a couple of you are jumping the gun or, at the very least, making a hasty choice. – Revert Https Non Ssl
#1 My rankings have dropped! This is certainly unsettling, especially since the reason you’re changing your HTML initially is because Google declares it to be an important indexing factor. So, your rankings ought to be increasing surely? – Revert Https Non Ssl
Experienced SEOs understand that there’s dancing whenever you make major changes to your website. Google needs time to go through and evaluate the new version of your website versus the previous. In that time, the rankings may decrease for a short period of time. This is especially the case with SSL as you’re altering your URLs and this is an issue for Google. – Revert Https Non Ssl
Generally, you’ll see a little decrease in your rankings for several days or even weeks following the switch to SSL following which Google will be able to recognize the change as what it is and be able to stabilize. In general, you’ll stabilize to or be above the level you were prior to. The only reason that could cause an issue that is more persistent is a configuration error.
If you’re running two HTTP as well as HTTPS version of the site it could cause problems with duplicate content. In the event that your SSL is insecure and alerting users about an unsecure website You could be penalized. – Revert Https Non Ssl
2: I’ve never observed any change in rankings. This is an extremely difficult point to defend. In reality, certain websites will not notice any benefit in switching to SSL. – Revert Https Non Ssl
If you consider all the factors that affect search rankings as having a point value I’ll give you an analogy. Think for a second that having a good meta description can be a +20 point modifier. Keyword stuffing can be a 20 point modifier. duplicate content is a -100 penalty until you correct it. Regularly published content of high quality will add 5 points for each new article. You’ll see the concept. – Revert Https Non Ssl
In this type of situation changing your entire website to SSL can give you some sort of +1 point per site. It’s a nice bonus! This can make your rank go up! However, if there’s a difference in your website and the other site in search results equals 50, then switching to SSL won’t make a any difference. – Revert Https Non Ssl
In actuality, changing from SSL can be such a minimal aspect of search rankings right now that it only is make you appear superior to an identical website. It provides Google more confidence in your website, and it provides you with the benefit of the doubt in the event that someone scrapes your content, and that sort of thing. These aren’t tangible effects that aren’t always quantifiable using your analytics.
It’s frustrating to go through all the Google dance and temporarily reduced rankings only to see that you are to exactly where you started. It’s an awful amount of effort for no gain. – Revert Https Non Ssl
I’m with you, I do. The question is, would it be better to take out SSL and then go through it over again, or let it go? Google assures us that over time, SSL will be more and more essential. We’ve seen the significance of security increase in the past few years. It’s better to get the small increase in SEO today, with the expectation of further increases later on, than to lose the chance of an increase due to the effort required. – Revert Https Non Ssl
3: I’m experiencing problems embedding cross-site material. This is perhaps one of the very few legitimate issues related to SSL I’ve run into. A complete site built on SSL can cause a commotion when you attempt to embed content into an Iframe, Flash window, or from the CDN that isn’t secured. When embedding insecure media, it will cause an error, but the user won’t be able to see the error.
There are solutions to the problem. Instead of taking out SSL and removing it altogether, why not find out what the issue is and solve it? If you’re running an CDN that you control, you could change the CDN to SSL by itself. In reality, whatever source you have embedded in that you control, you can change to SSL. You may have look through the documentation or talk to the service provider who can assist your, but this is a possibility. – Revert Https Non Ssl
In the event of anything else, there are three alternatives. The first is that you can simply keep waiting. Many sites are implementing SSL and sooner or later the service you’re looking to use will change. However, this won’t assist you in the here and right now. Another option, then is to locate an alternative source for the content. Perhaps someone else has hosted it elsewhere. You can search and access the source. – Revert Https Non Ssl
A different option would be to utilize plugins to fix many of the problems for you. A plugin such as the SSL Content Fixer can repair the majority the data source issues and help you to troubleshoot the remaining issues. – Revert Https Non Ssl
#4: SSL is expensive for very little benefit for my website. This issue is another instance where patience can be helpful. It’s true that SSL can be expensive however it doesn’t necessarily need to be. If your concern is the value of the expense, it is important to take into account the trust the users as well as Google provide to you.
It is important to think about the purchase that you make that would not otherwise be possible, the reputation you earn and the increasing significance that comes from SSL for SEO in the years ahead. I wouldn’t be shocked to see SSL grows more significant over the coming five years. – Revert Https Non Ssl
Before You Begin
Revert Https Non Ssl – If you’ve determined that even with all this, that you desire to go into HTTP and eliminate SSL from your website You can. I’ll not stop you from doing it. I don’t know who you are as the writing process is in progress. Be mindful when you are doing this. There are many possible issues that you could encounter. – Revert Https Non Ssl
The first thing to note is that just as you experienced a ranking shift after you installed SSL, you’ll have one after you take it off. You’re doing the same thing over and over again, but however, from the other direction. In addition, you’re eliminating an (minor) positively indicating your ranking. The loss could be more noticeable to your rank than the gain especially if your competitor is also using SSL simultaneously. – Revert Https Non Ssl
The second thing to do is ensure that you don’t take away SSL from the areas of your website that require it. I know that blogs that are informational don’t necessarily require SSL however you’ll require it on any membership portal and it’s mandatory for all purchase pages. Certain elements should always be secure , regardless of. – Revert Https Non Ssl
Third, if there is no need for the SSL certificate be sure to completely cancel this certificate. There’s no sense in spending money on it if you’re never using it, isn’t it? – Revert Https Non Ssl
The Simple Option
If you’ve got an WordPress website, you can have a simple option of switching to the SSL site. The easiest way to do this is to to force non-ssl which is a plugi – Revert Https Non Ssl
To make use of this plugin, first you must create your website. Go through your existing plugins and ensure that if any require or implement SSL itself, you turn them off and then remove the plugins. You must ensure that this does not break the site’s functionality although you’ll probably notice numerous security problems as soon as you do.
Then, delete any code that you manually added into the .htaccess file. This is typically the place you write server instructions that refer to SSL and full-site redirections so you should remove it if have any added code. – Revert Https Non Ssl
After that, you’ll be able to download the extension. This essentially adds the site-wide redirection to redirect HTTPS towards HTTP pages, and adds modifications and codes when needed and allows you to create specific exceptions to rules as needed. You can set an exception to your general page of settings, with each one on their own line.
If you’ve been following this website for a while will know that I’m not a fan of plugins that haven’t had updates for more than an entire twelve months, much less four years as this. The reason I’m comfortable the recommendation of this plugin is twofold. The first is that having older plugins can be the potential to open security holes on your website. Security-conscious users should make an effort to keep their plugins current and up to the latest.
By using this plugin, however you’re essentially eliminating security. The purpose is to open the possibility of a security breach therefore why not do it all in with this? I’m not saying that this plugin makes your website less secure than taking out SSL manually However, security isn’t the most important concern if you’re searching for this type of information.
Second, it’s an extremely basic plugin. It doesn’t modify or alter items in a manner that could be utilized by an attacker in order to access your website. You’re taking away a layer security, but not doing it in a bizarre manner that could harm your website. Removal of SSL is actually quite simple and just like installing it is simple therefore this plugin shouldn’t cause these kinds of problems.
The Manual Way
In the event that you’re no longer making use of WordPress or don’t wish to make use of a plugin that will take care of the job You’ll have to tackle things by hand.
In the first place, as mentioned above, scan your website for active scripts or plugins which are causing your HTTPS URL into being loaded as the URL. Get rid of those scripts and plugins.
Then, locate the .htaccess document and eliminate any code related to requiring SSL URLs to be legitimate URLs. It is generally necessary to add an entry to be able to use SSL but you should simply refer to the certificate documentation to figure out the details of that entry and then disable it if you can’t recall the details. In certain situations, you could erase or clean your
.htaccess file, and then have the server recreate it, however this is extremely risky for some websites. Don’t delete a file in a straight-line fashion and save a copy locally before you delete it, in case the deletion damages your website.
In the next step, you’ll be required to create a code that redirects to redirect HTTPS into HTTP. Just because you’re eliminating SSL does not mean that you are able to play around with Google’s rules and guidelines. Ensure you implement the correct redirect 301 or you’re likely lose some rankings. There’s more information on this here. simply reverse the code to be redirecting in the opposite direction.
Then, you’ll need to employ a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your website and locate every internal link. Make sure they are pointing towards your HTTP version instead of the HTTPS version, so that visitors aren’t forced to navigate through redirects each time they click the link within your site.
You might want to adopt canonicalized URLs in case you haven’t done it yet. This will inform Google that any existing HTTPS versions of websites that are accessible are supposed to have HTTP versions, and modify their index in line with this.
Finally, make sure you do your cleaning up. Check that your redirects are working by trying the HTTPS URL. Be sure to end any SSL certification subscription. Get rid of any other code that isn’t able to process links that are not SSL.
And, you might be tempted to save some pages from the “how to use SSL” guidebooks for one or two years in the future in case you decide this is an upgrade that you should have kept and you’d like to try it again. You must take it seriously!
