HTTPS and Google ranking penalty

If you don’t already know, if your website is not secure with SSL, most browsers will show a malicious website warning to site visitors AND Google will penalize search engine ranking.

The following should all resolve to a secure site:

http://yourcompanyname.com
http://www.yourcompanyname.com
https://yourcompanyname.com
https://www.yourcompanyname.com

But, they don’t. It’s really just a little .htaccess code that should be added to every site on Wine Direct.

I’m troubled that the Wine Direct team cannot resolve ALL versions of website domains to https://

Here’s their response to my email:

We operate a redirector server that redirects traffic from bare domains (AKA root domains) to their www counterpart. For example, redirecting requests from http://pinewines.com to http://www.pinewines.com. This server does not support HTTPS connections. For example, try this link: https://pinewines.com (Notice that this URL is using HTTPS). This link will always timeout and fail. Try http://pinewines.com instead. This is simply a limitation of our redirector. There is no plan to change this.

Every hosting company out there does this. Wine Direct needs to find a way to do this, too.

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Does this mean that winedirect does not support HTTPS
connections with the exception of the store?
Does this mean I have to go to a different host to get a
certificate and then install it or do I have to move my domain. sorry if these are stupid questions but I have been tasked with getting the SSL and I don’t have a grasp of the topic.

If you look in Settings > Website Settings and scroll down the Settings tab, you will come to an area that allows you to select SSL Everywhere. If I’m not mistaken, that will provide the experience you are looking for.

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If that’s true, Jeff, then please explain the reply I received from WineDirect support.

try each of these (our domain):

https://douxvin.com
http://douxvin.com
http://www.douxvin.com
https://www.douxvin.com

You’ll see that https://douxvin.com does NOT resolve. And it’s honestly the first one that SHOULD.

I don’t believe this response. WineDirect/Vin65 has been supporting SSL on the platform for years. I’d reconnect with the support team and direct them to their own support documentation.

https://documentation.vin65.com/SSL-Everywhere

If this has changed, then it needs to be resolved.

@wendy We do support https. By default it will be used on any pages requiring security such as member account pages and checkout and it can also be enabled across your entire website as Jeff mentioned in the Website Settings (or you can reach out to support to turn it for you.)

@themacguru is correct in referring to the URL redirector on our end. ie.
www.pinewines.com redirects to https://www.pinewines.com/ :white_check_mark:
http://pinewines.com redirects to https://www.pinewines.com/ :white_check_mark:
http://www.pinewines.com redirects to https://www.pinewines.com/ :white_check_mark:
But https://pinewines.com currently does not redirect to https://www.pinewines.com/ :x:

We don’t have any plans to support https on our redirector currently, but you can choose to point your root domain elsewhere and it won’t have an impact on our service.

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https://douxvin.com (or using your example) https://pinewines.com ARE THE MAIN urls for the websites. It’s the url that MOST people enter manually. And for them to not be resolved https:// damages Google ranking. I don’t understand how this is hard to fix GLOBALLY and why you wouldn’t want it GLOBALLY.

Not just for me, but for every site on your system.

There’s loads of info regarding Google ranking penalties:


Global fixes aside.
They just fixed it for me.
I just put in a ticket and it was done in less than 24 hours.

Have they?

https://comstockwines.com does NOT resolve. And that’s what Google looks for.

Hmm, there may be some miscommunication here. For @wendy we enabled SSL Everywhere so the homepage is now https://www.comstockwines.com/ instead of http://www.comstockwines.com/

@themacguru is requesting for https://comstockwines.com/ to redirect to https://www.comstockwines.com/, which it does not at this time. We would recommend submitting a Feature Request to our product team for this functionality here: https://documentation.vin65.com/News-Release/Request-a-Feature

Hope this helps and thanks for your feedback!

How are more wineries not involved in this? Right now, your WineDirect website is being downgraded in search results by Google. Please vote here:

https://ideas.winedirect.com/ideas/SC-I-287

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Also, someone in the support team agrees:

“I understand your point of view and can’t argue with you. Honestly, I wish that I could relay the message that at some point the server will be updated. But those details haven’t been made available to support.”

Hi Andrea, when I turn on SSL Everywhere via Website Settings, we found customers are unable to subscribe to our mailing list via our website.

When the SSL Everywhere is not ticked, then they can. Any suggestions?

Hey @RebeccaDuffy,

It looks like the mailchimp form being used on the Sign Up page is using some external scripts through “http” causing the page to not be secure and the form to not submit properly. If you have a developer who added in the scripts / external form, I would get them to take a look and make adjustments for https.

Our Redirector now supports HTTPS connections. If the A Record for your root domain points to our redirector ( 52.41.61.31 ) you should now be able to use links such as https://pinewines.com (without the www).

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