HTTPS is Now a Google Ranking Signal

Google has announced that they have decided to make HTTPS encryption a part of their search engine algorithm. For the time being, it is a very lightweight signal, but Google has said it will affect about 1% of queries worldwide.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about. HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure and it appears in the first part of a URL when you type in a website address. So, for example: HTTPS://www.google.com/. That “S” makes a huge difference in terms of security. It basically adds a layer of encryption between the website and the user to make it a lot more difficult for hackers to intercept or steal sensitive information.

According to Google, they would “like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web…”

Despite this small benefit, webmasters should keep in mind that a SSL connection may, in some cases, slow down the load time of a site. Also, for certain types of websites, I don’t think it is really necessary. For example, a blog wouldn’t really need an SSL certificate because they are not transmitting any sensitive information to and from the user. On the other hand, an ecommerce site that handles transactions, definitely should be using SSL.