Http canonical .htaccess

[gimmick]

Hi,

I get a warning that my webpage is showing duplicate content with https address even though I haven't purchased any SSL certificate.

However, there should be a easy way to fix this within .htaccess file by using rel canonical tag. But I didn't find any information how to make a canonical redirect in .htaccess to http from https over the internet, so I'm hoping someone here has that information.

Any information would be highly appreciated.

Kim

[BeanstalkIM]

You wouldn't be setting up the canonicals in the htaccess file so that may be where you're hitting a road block.  If you saw references to the htaccess file that would likely be in reference to setting up redirects from https to http to eliminate the error.    What tech is your site built on?  With that I'll probably be able to point you in the right direction.

That said, If you do just want to setup the redirection via htaccess you should be able to use the following code:

<code>RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule (.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}</code>

Note: the code doesn't come out right here so you'll want to visit the link below to see how it should be formatted.

I need to note that I haven't had a chance to test it but it does look right.  I'm far more familiar with the code to go the other way.  The initial source of the code (credit where it's due) is at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8371/how-do-you-redirect-https-to-http.

Hope that helps.

Dave

[gimmick]

Thank you for your reply Dave.

I explain little further: I presume that my site www.kimwist.com should redirect to http when attamted to access via https, because I don't have a SSL certificate for the site.

However, https takes to a page the server administration has set up, that says my site will be shown here in the near future. This is just like I just purchased the domain and have not uploaded any site to it yet.

I should probably contact the host provider and ask about this, but I also read that this is a common problem and should be fixed with the "rel canonical tag" in .htaccess file, that is the reason I asked about it here.

The .htaccess code that you provided shuts the server and creates an internal error, so something else should be implemented.

The whole issue is of course because https is considered duplicate content and I simply want https to redirect to http, but it seems to be quite difficult to accomplish.

Thanks, Kim

[BeanstalkIM]

Sorry about that code.  Ordinarily I'd have had a chance to test it but didn't have a test site ready for that type of testing.

Thinking about it further, an actual redirect won't work due challenge/response on the certificate not being installed.  If you load the site in a new browser you'll see what I'm talking about.

If the site were mine (or a clients of course) I'd recommend getting a certificate setup and redirecting the whole thing to HTTPS now.  If you don't want to do that the certificate will at least light up the HTTPS site directly (i.e. without the insecure warning) which will allow it to be redirected properly.

That said ... you do have the canonical tags on the pages properly so a duplicate content warning will be a false positive in that the content is indeed duplicated but Google knows that the HTTPS is the primary source as far as I can tell.  Your site is going into a redirect loop on HTTPS so I can't double check but it appears as though it should from the way it's displaying in the source.  Happy to double check after the loop is corrected.

Dave

[gimmick]

Hi again Dave and thank you taking time to look into this problem!

I contacted my service provider finally and they installed a free self signed certificate on my server which took care of the problem.

The other option would have been, just like you suggested, to buy a SSL certificate for the site. But this is a small site and I'm not sure if it would help in rankings or be in significant in any other way.

What do you mean by "your site is going into a redirect loop on HTTPS"?

Should something be done about that?

Kim

[BeanstalkIM]

When I visit https://www.kimwist.com/ it's spinning into a loop and doesn't display the site.  You can check it at http://www.redirect-checker.org/ and see what I'm talking about.  It looks like it's 301ing to itself.  I'm wondering if you've set a redirection to go to https that's trying to do it if the URL itself is https in which case you'd want to switch it to point to http.

[gimmick]

Thanks Dave!

I had a attempt to redirect https to http in my .htaccess file. I removed it and now everything seem to be ok.

However, I get a 200 ok response from the redirect checker. If I rememer correctly this is not what is should be, although it says all is fine. If www to non www and all other redirects are in place, I think the response should have been something else... not quite sure though about this.

[BeanstalkIM]

A 200 is perfect (it just means "OK").  I double-checked and your canonicals' are pointing to the http version which is also what you want if you're not doing a 301.  Some tools will still show a duplication even with the canonicals but rest assured ... Google knows what's what.

Best of luck to you as you proceed forward and glad it worked out.

Regards.

Dave