Google to use HTTPS as a ranking signal

[baldidiot]

Just saw this, thought it may be of interest to some of you guys:

...over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it's only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content — while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogs...il&utm_term=0_24531e59ea-dbd226c6e2-199211861

 

[tifosi]

<cynic> They'll be selling ssl certificates next.... another market cornered! </cynic>

 

[Adam H]

Not surprising really, i was talking about this a couple of years ago in how i thought it would be implemented, at the start of the year Matt cutts then hinted that he would "like" SSL to be factored in because it makes sense as a part of the safer web ( which i agree with )

With peoples connections now much faster than before its a bit more viable considering that SSL does indeed reduce page speed slightly even though Googles highlight of page speed being a factor.

If you have a VPS or dedicated server which you have to your self with no 3rd parties using then its easily over come with the usage of nginx, mod-ruid2, xcache and SDPY to enhance SSL speeds but if your on Shared hosting then its likely you will have to take a small hit on page speed to take advantage of SSL, some shared hosts dont even allow Dedicated IP's for shared customers so that will bang some heads for sure.

The fact it also gives the website owner a bit more cost , i.e domain name, hosting, SSL certificate , dedicated IP address "could" also been seen as an added way of showing trust because it means the owner is actively renewing and maintaining their site to be more secure.

It can only be a good thing, especially with the amount of Malware infected sites there are around today.

 

[monaghan]

That'll be fun, we're virtually out of available IPv4 address blocks, there's not much consumer level support for IPv6 and little support for sharing multiple SSL's on single IP's yet and Google's encouraging SSL

If you have an insecure site, it will still be hackable, SSL only encrypts between the browser and the web server, the same data will be in the browser and on the web server unencrypted!

 

[RobM]

Yeah I'm fed up with sites loading too fast. I think non-secure information should be encrypted to keep my browser nice and slow.

 

[aZooZa]

<cynic> They'll be selling ssl certificates next.... another market cornered! </cynic>

You betcha. Part of GWT no doubt.

 

[scooter]

I jest read one of the posts below the article...

It doesn’t matter whether the server supports it; that’s the easy part. The client has to support it, too, and there are too many people still running WinXP and Android 2. Who is going to set up their website so those people can’t access it?

Is this correct? No-one running XP can access?
10% of my visitors/customers are still on XP

What's going to happen to happen to all non domain savvy businesses out there? and small businesses starting up? They will not have a clue about all this unless it becomes standard when you take out web space it comes with ssl.

Can you get a certificate that shares the same ip address with multiple sites on it?

Can you get a certificate that serves mutiple domains on different ip addresses?

Bit of a nightmare.


Monaghan....
Are we going to see hosting companies offering ssl as standard when you purchase space?



.

 

[dazc]

What's going to happen to happen to all non domain savvy businesses out there? and small businesses starting up? They will not have a clue about all this unless it becomes standard when you take out web space it comes with ssl.

Cloudflare are going to be offering it as part of their free tier in the near future.

http://blog.cloudflare.com/google-n...-cloudflare-on-track-to-make-it-free-and-easy

 

[topcat]

Perhaps it will make the difference between ranking #100 and #90, but nothing more than that.

It's good practice though I suppose.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Perhaps it will make the difference between ranking #100 and #90, but nothing more than that.

It's good practice though I suppose.

They could have different tiers of how much it counts. i.e. if you're a 20 year established site with 10's of thousands of legitimate links then the extra benefit is zero.

If you're a relatively new site then the benefit (percentage wise) could be far higher. It would be a good way to hinder the bulk spammers... if your business relies on registering 100's of domains at a time for £5 each then having to pay £20+ for a SSL certificate each could cripple your business.

If you run a 'real' business of 1-2 sites then nothing to worry about... just get the SSL cert and forget about it.

 

[topcat]

Which is effectively the same thing.

It will have relatively more impact when your site is young and has no other quality signals for Google to go on.

But you're not going to rank for anything then anyway...

They could have different tiers of how much it counts. i.e. if you're a 20 year established site with 10's of thousands of legitimate links then the extra benefit is zero.

If you're a relatively new site then the benefit (percentage wise) could be far higher. It would be a good way to hinder the bulk spammers... if your business relies on registering 100's of domains at a time for £5 each then having to pay £20+ for a SSL certificate each could cripple your business.

If you run a 'real' business of 1-2 sites then nothing to worry about... just get the SSL cert and forget about it.

 

[Retired_Member38]

But you're not going to rank for anything then anyway...

That would depend on the niche, the difficulty of the keyword, how deep into long tails they let it go, and how much of a benefit they decide to let https add for you.

 

[monaghan]

Can you get a certificate that shares the same ip address with multiple sites on it?

Can you get a certificate that serves mutiple domains on different ip addresses?

Monaghan....
Are we going to see hosting companies offering ssl as standard when you purchase space?

You can (on a technical basis) have multiple SSL domains on a single IP (SNI - Server Name Indication), however, there is very little support for this at the moment. As was pointed out IE on XP has no support for SNI so you rule out a potential large chunk of visitors.

The certificate is per domain, the only exception is a wildcard, but that covers multiple subdomains so xyz.domain + abc.domain + def.domain and so on.

I doubt hosting companies will offer an SSL in the costs, certainly not the budget end of the market as the prices are almost give-away already. Many only use self signed certificates for the server so I doubt many will be queuing up to give them away, increased support costs to help people with installing them, increased overhead on the server to run the encryption / decryption will cripple the typical oversold budget provider.

I guess I'd better get in before you can get one free with your Google account - Anyone want an SSL certificate?

 

[Oceanic]

Just saw this, thought it may be of interest to some of you guys:



http://googlewebmastercentral.blogs...il&utm_term=0_24531e59ea-dbd226c6e2-199211861

I notice the link Google announced this on is not Https?

 

[seemly]

I notice the link Google announced this on is not Https?

Why would it be? I'm pretty sure Google and any of it's products/platforms don't need to do SEO to be found...

 

[Helmuts]

.. google rankings depend on many factors - and one of the Big ones is the loading speed. While you might gain a little bit by having a ssl - you will lose much, much more as the loading speed will drop + some users will be lost as well


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Retired_member41]

Will outbound links have to be deleted to have a fully secure https site? Or did I read that wrong?

 

[ild2014]

SSL protocol is most secure system because in this system there is no third source is involved to view data on the browser. Browser directly show data from the web server, but in old protocol data flows between different sources until it reached to the user browser. So, SSL system is most secure and favorable and suggested system.

 

[monaghan]

SSL protocol is most secure system because in this system there is no third source is involved to view data on the browser. Browser directly show data from the web server, but in old protocol data flows between different sources until it reached to the user browser. So, SSL system is most secure and favorable and suggested system.

SSL does not make a secure website, it simply encrypts data between the server and browser. An broken website with SSL will leak just as much data as the same site without an SSL certificate!

 

[scooter]

Will outbound links have to be deleted to have a fully secure https site? Or did I read that wrong?

Good point.

What about inbound links?
Does this mean all links at present become dead?

Can they be 301'd?





.