Http resolving to https - why isn't it doing that?

[McTaggart]

Hi everyone

I've just been looking at a few https websites and noticed the http urls weren't redirecting to their https equivalents - why would a website owner not bother redirecting?

As an example: http://www.marksandspencer.com

I look forward to your feedback. L

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

I see no reason why they do this on purpose. It's just that the redirection is not done correctly. (it's not done.)

[davebuts]

Hi Luke,

For that site, it looks like some pages are resolving to https and some are not.

It's possible that they are in the middle of a transition to https and are rolling it out slowly over the entire site - it's hard to know.

Asking why a companies wouldn't automatically redirect http to https - again, it's hard to say. It might be that they are also in the middle of a transition to https, or it might be that they simply don't know any better/are using an SEO service that doesn't know any better.

Google will probably be able to figure it out and it shouldn't really hurt them, but if we want things to be perfect and want to make things easier for search engines, then the then URLs should definitely resolve to https, if it's available.

Cheers,

David

[BlueCorona]

Though the ideal plan of action would be to move all pages on the site over to https, the HTTPS certificate happens on a webpage by webpage basis—so there are a few things that could be going on here.

First, the website could have chosen to only move forward with procuring the HTTPS certificate for certain webpages and neglected to get it for others, which is why it's only showing up on some.

Second, as mentioned below, they could be in the process of transitioning all pages to https but not be all the way there yet, transitioning the pages in batches but not all batches have been complete yet.

Third, the redirects could simply have been done incorrectly for certain pages!

One of these three options should provide the answer you're looking for.