Google Starts Giving A Ranking Boost To Secure HTTPS/SSL Sites

[HurricaneK8]

Hot off the press: Google Starts Giving A Ranking Boost To Secure HTTPS/SSL Sites

Google says this gives websites a small ranking benefit, only counting as a ?very lightweight signal? within the overall ranking algorithm.

Here is the official websmaster blog article: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: HTTPS as a ranking signal

 

[Dustybones]

Thanks for grabbing that Kate. I've been up to my neck in work...

 

[Dustybones]

I've been wanting to do this for a while now and with this news along with this weeks hacks we have decided to add a link in the footer to an Anti Spam page, which includes outbound links to resources.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Kate. I saw that but didn't have time to share so appreciate you doing it!

 

[Greg Schueler]

I just read that too and stopped by to mention it.

I heard that they were going to implement this in the future, and apparently they have been using this as a small ranking factor for a few months now.

Any correlation with the Pigeon Poo? I haven't been looking for https on all these weird rankings that are popping up. the 'no-website' G+ pages that are ranking are definitely https.
(ha-ha, just added another layer of "#%*#%^" to the already confusing times - sorry)

 

[Laustin1878]

Https protocal Now Part of Google's Ranking Factors

Before you go jumping to change your site to be more secure, this change only affects 1% of global searches according to Google. Here is the article. It was posted a couple of weeks ago but I just saw it in my feed.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Luke!

We already had a discussion going so I merged your post in.

 

[Laustin1878]

SOB...lol I did search and I see why my searches didn't come up. You guys are on top of your game.

 

[Linda Buquet]

No worries Luke, it happens all the time.

FYI sometimes need to do Google search, it finds thing the forum search box doesn't.
One of these days I need to add Google search to the forum.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

There's really no reason to do this. It's a very lightweight ranking signal.

It's too much of a hassle to even go through really, in my opinion.

 

[Lloyd Silver]

I agree that right now, I wouldn't go back to existing sites and add an SSL certificate solely for what has been said is a very small ranking factor for very few search queries.

With that said, Google is clearly making a statement that they believe this is important. Ever since I heard this was a possibility a couple of months ago, I've been making all of my sites secure in anticipation of this becoming more important as time goes by.

But keep in mind there are two components (at least) to what I believe Google is looking for here. First, the obvious additional security that an SSL certificate brings. Second, the additional trust that is established by advanced SSL certificates that not only confirm domain ownership but that there is a real company behind the certificate.

For me, the most important point of all of this is to continue looking for ways to establish trust in Google's eyes. SSL certificates, malware scanning, industry associations, even local citations - all are ways for us to prove legitimacy.

 

[djbaxter]

No worries Luke, it happens all the time.

FYI sometimes need to do Google search, it finds thing the forum search box doesn't.
One of these days I need to add Google search to the forum.

Or Sphinx. I have that at Psychlinks. Much better and faster than vBulletin's native search. Does it's own indexing on the server outside of vBulletin and uses that to serve up search results.

 

[BWrightTLM]

I just had a prospect give me a call and say that they moved their entire site to https a couple months ago and almost immediately had a 40-50% decrease in website traffic.

Has anyone else experienced this? You think it would benefit to go back to http?

The business sells window furnishings online.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

This is a little off track with local, but thought I'd share...

I might build new sites with https, but not go thru the enormous pain you'll go thru in trying to convert a site. And even then, that new site would need to get enough traffic to make it worth the extra costs and hassles.

I'm always hearing about https in terms of ranking and the promise of increased ranking. Without knowing more details about Ben's prospect, it's hard to say if they did that transition well or made a boo-boo in the transition. But switching to https is certainly not the thing that will save a site that's tanking -

One huge benefit I've never seen anyone write about with https is Analytics and referrer traffic.
If SoMe is a part of your strategy with your client, then is analytics showing anywhere near the right numbers?
RFC 7231 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content A user agent MUST NOT send a Referer header field in an unsecured HTTP request if the referring page was received with a secure protocol Now go look at your G+ page, FB page and Twitter page.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I just had a prospect give me a call and say that they moved their entire site to https a couple months ago and almost immediately had a 40-50% decrease in website traffic.

Has anyone else experienced this? You think it would benefit to go back to http?

The business sells window furnishings online.

It may not be the https itself.

Have you taken a look at Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are any 404's from the site transfer or something else?

Any time you make a major change to a website, there are always possible ranking issues that can arise.