SSL or Secure Socket Layer, encrypts, protects and proves the validity of a website
So why should I be concerned about this on my web site? An SSL certificate on your website, proves its authenticity as well as protecting the visitor from scams and attacks while showing them that their browsing experience is authentic. Google, once again is leading the way with requiring SSL on sites. Their Chrome browser will display a warning message when visiting any non secured site, so that the visitor is aware of any potential threats.
You should always protect all of your websites with HTTPS, even if they don’t handle sensitive communications. Aside from providing critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users’ personal information, HTTPS is a requirement for many new browser features, particularly those required for progressive web apps.
Google is taking in to account the security level of your web site among its criteria for search results. So while it won’t mean the end of unsecured sites, it means that a site with a proper https:// will rank higher and get more attention.
Chrome leads the way
Googles’ Chrome web browser is one of the most popular in use. Both on mobile devices and desktop devices. They are leading the way in providing the user with information to help them browse more securely than ever before:
Chrome’s new interface will help users understand that all HTTP sites are not secure, and continue to move the web towards a secure HTTPS web by default.
As of February 2018, the statistics are impressive:
- Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected
- Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is now protected
- 81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default
This is an example of a site without SSL. It shows as not secure.
A site with a valid security certificate shows up green with a lock.
Secure Address Bar
Click on the lock and you will see some basic info
Clicking the Certificate shows the valid information
You can expand that to find who owns the site and more details.
The Future of the Secure Web
In the near future, Googles’ Chrome browser will begin marking non secured sites even more aggressively. Highlighting those non secured sites even more, so that visitors will be made well aware of the status of a site.
We make sure all of your sites are secured
We’ve worked tirelessly to ensure that all of the sites we maintain have SSL certificates so that customers visiting your sites are 100% sure that your site is secure and authentic. Before these new rules for Chrome were put in place we went through all our sites, adding certificates where required, to make sure we were 100% compliant with this additional rule from Chrome.
Google is including HTTPS as a signal for ranking now
While currently not having the weight of quality content or some other similar signals, https is fast becoming a contributing factor to search results. So the more sites are secured, the better the quality of search results are and the more secure the web as a whole becomes.
… 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.
