HTTPS To Become An SEO Ranking Signal

What are HTTPS Websites?

On August 6, Google announced on its Webmaster Center Blog that HTTPS will now be a ranking signal. According to an About Technology article by Jennifer Kyrin, websites use HTTPs to collect sensitive customer data such as banking or purchasing information. The data is encrypted and can only be read by the recipient. HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer. Kyrin explains how to tell if a page is using an HTTPS. First, there should be a lock icon in the browser window pane, usually at the bottom of the page. Next, the URL says “https://” (notice this is different from the usual “http://”).

So what does this development mean? “Google wants to make the Internet a safer place and has worked hard to improve their own security over the years,” says Matt Southern in a Search Engine Journal article.

In fact, if you use Google Drive, Gmail or Google Search, you’re automatically accessing a strong Google connection. HTTPS protects “the integrity and confidentiality of your users’ data. For example, when a user enters data into a form on your site in order to subscribe to updates or purchase a product, a secure site protects that user’s personal information and ensures that the user communicates with the authorized owner of the site,” Google says.

However, not everyone agrees that these websites are safer. Nicole Arce discusses in a Tech Times article that at time of publication, more than 1,300 people had left comments on Google’s blog post announcement.

“A few commenters, however, have raised issues that the measure provides only a false sense of security, since most hackers penetrate data stored in databases and not information currently in transit. Others are concerned about the potential costs of owning an HTTPS website,” Arce says.

Webmasters Need to Make the Switch

Image courtesy of Yuri Samoilov

Apparently Google has decided to move forward with HTTPS after months of successful tests using encrypted connections as a ranking signal, Google says. However, they say it is a lightweight signal that will only affect 1 percent of global queries. It won’t have as big of an effect as on your website does like original articles and engaging, colorful images.

Google will give webmasters time to make the switch, but eventually to make the search world safer, all website owners may need to transfer to HTTPS. If you’re ready to migrate your website over now, read Google’s . In fact, according to a Los Angeles Times article by Salvador Rodriguez, San Francisco startup company has said they will offer websites free encrypted HTTPS connections, so check out their website to see if they are still offering this!

Image courtesy of Chris Dlugosz

If you already have HTTPS websites, do the Qualys SSL Server Test to check your security level and configuration. Google has suggests some best practices in order to make the process easier. Some of the tips include deciding if you need a single, multi-domain or wildcard certificate, use relative URLS for resources that reside on the same secure domain and allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Also check out on the Google Developers Youtube channel for more information.

Just for fun here’s a list of some of the sites we found that currently use HTTPS. They include Facebook, Twitter, Google of course, DropBox, Amazon and more.

Have you moved your website over to HTTPS? What do you think about Google asking all webmasters to make the switch, especially if they want to rank higher in SEO? Let us know by commenting below or interacting with us on social media.