SSL, SEO, and Site Migration question

[Atlanta-SMO]

When migrating a site to a new url and one where the old url had no https and the new url will be full https does it matter if the 301 redirect points at http://thisisthenewsite.com ?

Meaning, should the new site have the ssl / https up prior to redirecting the old site?

Does it matter if you redirect the old site to http://thisisthenewsite.com or https://thisisthenewsite.com? Since the site will force to https anyway?

[DennisSeymour]

Hi!

From my transitions, pointing to it hasn't had any negative effects. So from my own experience, my answer is that it doesnt really matter much.

[Chris661]

I think we will see a lot more about this soon but in the mean time I would have to ask, "Why take the chance?".

Just 301 to the https site. 301s allegedly don't pass all the link juice and you are potentially using two 301s when you could just use one. If it were me I would want to redirect to the https site and be building new links and even updating old ones to https.

[Atlanta-SMO]

Thanks for your response Chris.

The point you made is exactly what I told our lead web developer. Why redirect more than necessary? It seems like it would be just another opportunity to have something go wrong, lose something in the switches, not pass as much of the link juice. If you lose 20% redirecting it seems like it could risk doubling that loss.. (I am just picking 20% randomly for an example.)

Does the site "forcing from http to https" count as a redirect? I know it is a change in protocol... hmmm

[Chris661]

That's a great question and I hope someone can answer. I have read that Google sees the http and https as two different sites but since the force to https would typically be handled by the server on the same domain, not really a 301 I would think. But I am out of my depth (again). So is there any loss of linkjuice?

[Everett]

The "force" to https could be handled in many ways so I can't say if it is a 301 redirect or not. But you can check: http://httpstatus.io/ .

http and https indicate two different URLs. That I know of, Google doesn't just automatically assume a one-to-one relationship between them and choose a canonical version for you if both are available to index. In other words, if users end up at https just go ahead and redirect straight to https. Really, if you're site is https you should just forget http even exists as an option. Even an internal text link with the wrong protocol can throw up errors in some browsers.

For what it's worth, I just switched one of my sites over and got burned by listening to Google once again. All went well from a technical perspective, except that revenue dropped by about 30% because Adsense is no longer showing certain types of ads (probably re targeting).

[Atlanta-SMO]

This is how I see it after some enlightenment.. Google doesn't really come right out and say this (if you do see that they do, please share). The actual term for the change from http to https is a rewrite.  We are instructing the rewrite via a 301 redirect. Once the 301 redirect is in place, we set the canonical to https://www.xxxx.com (or non www if you prefer)  Google then awards all kinds of SEO juice for the use of https... Right lol...