8-7-2014: [FORBES] Complete Reversal: Google To Reward Sites With HTTPS Security In Search Rankings
A Google+ Hangout on Air with Google Webmaster Central John Mueller revealed that there is no direct benefit to having an SSL active on your domain although this might be looked at in the future.
Another question related to invalid certificates, further suggested that even if there is an invalid certificate this should still not effect a sites ranking in any way.
Webmasters have long wondered if an SSL certificate would increase search rankings based on the fact that the site has gone though additional screening from an authoritative source. This question asked at the July 21, 2014 Google+ Hangout answered that question.
- NO, there is no direct benefit to having an SSL active on your domain although this might be looked at in the future.
There was also no valid reason to ensure the extended validation certificate (the green one) is used over the regular one; as long as the connection is encrypted and secured appropriately (2048 bits at-least), that is fine from Google’s perceptive.
John Mueller said “What you definitely don’t need is the extended validation certificate, the EV one with the little green bar on top. That’s something that may make sense for your users, but it’s not really what we’re looking for at the moment.”
JOHN MUELLER: At the moment, we’re not using that as a ranking signal, so it’s not the case that if you have everything on HTTPS, then we’d automatically promote your website in search. But that’s something we might look at in the future, if we think that this is a good thing to do, if the metrics that come out of our analysis there say that this is the right thing to do. But for purely for SEO reasons, I don’t think there is any real difference between HTTP and HTTPS. I imagine there are a lot of second order factors that are involved, such as user trust, and depending on the type of data that you have, whether or not they recommend your website, if they want to stay on your website, if they had do more things on your website than just the basic things. But that’s something that doesn’t really have a direct SEO aspect to it.
7:50 in this video discusses the issue.
JOHN MUELLER: I don’t know. I imagine the pricing depends a lot on where you get those certificates. So it’s not that I’d say the $30 is this specific certificate type, but rather it’s just this product that this one supplier is essentially offering. So I don’t know exactly what’s behind those different numbers there. What we do say it is to make sure that your certificate uses 2048 bits at least. And we’ve seen, I think most of the suppliers offer those kind of certificates. What you definitely don’t need is the extended validation certificate, the EV one with the little green bar on top. That’s something that may make sense for your users, but it’s not really what we’re looking for at the moment. So at the moment, if you make sure that the connection between users and your website is just secured appropriately, then that’s something that we think makes a lot of sense in general and something that we would like to recommend that webmasters do.
11:00 in this video discusses the issue.
About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of Internet Advertising Inc. He specializes in Website Monetization, authored a ‘how to’ book called ‘‘Mastering Your Website’, and is a key player in several Internet related businesses through his search engine strategy company Searchen Networks®
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