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SSL conflict - https redirected to primary https domain

Tom Jeffrey
I hate to stir up an old thread, but with Google's new desire to see the world through an https: lens, having https: requests to a domain without a secure certificate redirect to the primary domain on a server is now causing all kinds of hell for keyword rankings. We are seeing the primary domain on the server getting indexed by Google when Google requests the non-secure domain via but instead of getting redirected the 404: Page not found - HostGator instead. Therefore, content and keywords for 404: Page not found - HostGator are getting indexed under the name of address as the link. Clicking on the link goes to 404: Page not found - HostGator of course. There has got to be a good way to overcome this situation.

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2 comments

Date Votes
  • Tom Jeffrey
    OK, the editor messed up my examples, so lets try it this way: We are seeing the primary domain on the server getting indexed by Google when Google requests the non-secure domain via https. So Google tries to index via https somedomain.com but instead of getting redirected the http version of somedomain.com for indexing, it is getting the https version of primary-example.com instead. Therefore, content and keywords for the https version of primary-example.com are getting indexed under the name of a non-existent https version of somedomain.com and are showing up in Google results with the https links to somedomain.com address as the link. Clicking on the link goes to https version primary-example.com of course.
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  • ChrisI
    Hello! From what it sounds like, there may be a configuration issue on the server where the domain is hosted. Normally, if there is no SSL certificate set up on a domain, it will use the shared certificate or the hostname certificate. If there is no default vhost for 443 on that IP, by default apache will load the first SSL vhost. If you don't have root access to the server, you may want to consider getting with your provider to ensure that there isn't a server configuration issue. Installing an SSL certificate on the domain would also likely resolve the issue. You may also be able to force a redirect to http:// from https:// in your .htaccess file instead to force google to load the http:// version of the site. This may help set that up as well. Forcing http using .htaccess Thanks!
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