If your website has an invalid SSL certificate for your site (perhaps your shared hosting company has a wildcard certificate), most browsers will show a warning about the validity of the certiticate.
However, Google could still index your site using https: URLs, as it assumes you have a valid SSL certificate.
The problem is, if people click the links from Google, they get the browser warning.
Changes to your htaccess file wont work as.
Here is a php snippet you can drop into your theme functions.php. It redirects at the PHP level.
// Avoid SSL on Google
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'bhww_ssl_template_redirect', 1 );
function bhww_ssl_template_redirect() {
$https = ( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_HTTPS'] == 'On' );
if ( $https ) {
if ( 0 === strpos( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 'http' ) ) {
wp_redirect( preg_replace( '|^https://|', 'http://', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ), 301 );
exit();
} else {
wp_redirect( ‘http://’ . $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] . $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’], 301 );
exit();
}
}
}