Google to give more weight to secure websites

Google have recently confirmed that they will be giving more credit to websites that have a security certificate (SSL). They announced the change at their developers conference this year and revealed it’s an attempt to make sure “that websites people access from Google are secure”.

A security certificate loads web pages and transmits data in a secure, encrypted environment. You can tell if a website is using a security certificate because the “http://” in the web address will be replaced with “https://”.

“For now it’s only a very lightweight signal”

For now they’ve said it’s just a minor change that will affect “fewer than 1% of global queries and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content”, however over time they may increase it’s weighting and Google are urging website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to help “keep everyone safe on the web”.

Whilst this may seem unnecessary for small websites that don’t transmit any personal or sensitive data, it’s a great way to help better secure contact forms and website admin areas and is essential for ecommerce and membership sites that deal with personal data. It’s also just another of the many small changes you can make to benefit your search engine ranking at a relatively low cost.

SSL’s with us start from as little as around £50, if you’d like to know more please get in touch!