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HTTPS As Ranking Signal - Google Announcement

MorphManMorphMan British Expat lost in S.E Asia
edited August 2014 in Other / Off Topic
Just saw this and thought I would share, interesting indeed! http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html What you guys think? Not sure how much this will affect rankings in the future
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Comments

  • young_gooneryoung_gooner
    Wow! This is new,thanks for posting this!
  • derdorderdor
    I think it will affect big time in the future.
    Clever step from Google.

    Seems funny though, everyday Google making it easy to rank comparing to panda penguin years.

  • MorphManMorphMan British Expat lost in S.E Asia
    I can't see it working to be honest, sure for sites that need it ecomerce sites etc. it's just like google authorship, and all the other google so called ranking factors that have come and gone. For example, I can't see how they would favor a site that has thin content just because it has a https cert vs an authority site with no https? .. I'm not worried...yet. Sites are still going to rank with or without in my opinion but let me throw out a scenario, if you are on page 2 say at #14 and your competitors all have https and are sitting on page 1 then it might be a wise investment to make to see if you get an added boost. For now take a chill pill and watch everyone run around saying seo is dead .. Lol
  • KaineKaine thebestindexer.com
    Have you ever seen a spamed site with https?
  • cefegecefege
    edited August 2014
    I have seen on namecheap 40$/year for multidomain cert but can someone see you are using the same cert on all yours sites?

    Or 9$/domain.
  • KaineKaine thebestindexer.com
    No really says, watched for same but it is not explained.
  • jjumpm2jjumpm2
    @cefege yep, the certificate will show ALL linked domains..
  • zerozero
    @jjumpm2 - footprint :/
  • jjumpm2jjumpm2
    edited August 2014
    @zero major footprint - definitely not a good idea - they are more for multi domain organisations, rather then spammers :)
  • KaineKaine thebestindexer.com
    edited August 2014
    @zero ^^



    But i want says never site using https make spam for rank (Have you ever seen a spamed site with https?)
  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    edited August 2014
    Erm, lots of incorrect information going round about this. I've been using SSL for over 6 months on a few of my sites after all the Snowden leaks and haven't done any A/B split testing with a non-https site so can't compare, but I'm not exactly complaining about lack of traffic :)

    1. You *can* buy separate SSL certificates for separate domains with no footprint. For example GoDaddy sell them for $40. Just make sure you get the basic one with no verification required, i.e not the greenbar and obviously put in different information each time.

    2. 'For example, I can't see how they would favor a site that has thin content just because it has a https cert vs an authority site with no https?' They aren't saying that... They clearly said it hadn't been rolled out to all searches and only affects 5% of searches, presumably for specific niches. Even when/if this is rolled out to all search results it will only give a very minor boost presumably.  I'm assuming payday loans are one such niche where establishing trust is hard - 8 of 10 in Google UK currently use https (has been the case for a while)

    3. Rae Hoffman had an interesting comment about it which I think is probably true: "I think they're trying to block us from sending data (like keywords, etc) to outside sources. I think this has way more to do with them trying to further their own business goals than to "save users" so to speak. "

    One thing you guys might want try is buy an SSL certificate for a previously slapped domain and 301 the non-http to the https.  Or try the http1.1 equivalent of 301... called 307. Or of course you might not, I leave it up to you :)
  • BuySERListsBuySERLists Vancouver, Canada
    It's really not all that tough OR expensive to get SSL going on your domains. You can purchase PositiveSSL certs for something like $9 a year and they offer them for $1.99 when you register a domain. These certs will cover one domain and its www, without wildcards.

    The real problem is going to be when inbound links from non-HTTPS websites get devalued. If and when that happens, building links "en masse" won't be easy.
  • MorphManMorphMan British Expat lost in S.E Asia
    Really guys! Are you all running out and buying SSL certs? .. It just more google fear mongering ....
  • webgrafixwebgrafix
    One other option is to look at running your domains through CloudFlare. I use it for almost all of the site in my PBN. It's $20 for the first domain, and only $5 for each additional per month. But they also offer much more than just s secure connection.

    Of course they have their free service... which is AWESOME!

    You can read more about it (and how it plays into this new change from Google) here on their blog.... http://blog.cloudflare.com/google-now-factoring-https-support-into-ranking-cloudflare-on-track-to-make-it-free-and-easy

    SSL All Things

    Second, at CloudFlare we've cleared one of the last major technical hurdle before making SSL available for every one of our customers -- even free customers. One of the challenges we had was ensuring we still had the flexibility to move traffic to sites dynamically between the servers that make up our network. While we can do this easily when traffic is over an HTTP connection, when a connection uses HTTPS we need to ensure that the correct certificates are in place and loaded into memory before requests are processed by a server.

    To accomplish this, we needed to redesign how certificates are loaded into a server's memory. Previously, we'd load certificates into memory before traffic was directed to a server. That creates challenges when dealing with millions of domains and when shifting traffic to help isolate or mitigate an attack.


  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    edited August 2014
    Duh, I'm using Cloudflare for some of my sites, forgot about that. Thanks.

    @MorphMan Even if using an SSL Certificate made literally no difference to ranks I'd still be using one for *some* of my sites, for the security boost as well as the slight trust boost. I can't see any negative of using https at all, apart from maybe if you forget to renew the cert (which I've done before, lol).

    If anyone is really hoping to see an sort of reasonable increase in SERPS due to just adding an SSL certificate then more fool them. I think it's about as 'powerful' as registering your domain for 5 years instead of 1, i.e. so little difference compared to linkspam.
  • BuySERListsBuySERLists Vancouver, Canada
    @spunko2010 I agree with what you said here. I actually use https/SSL on most of my money sites just as a conversion rate optimization tactic. For every hundred people that visit your website, there is some percentage that won't want to click through or make a purchase if it's not a HTTPS session. Even when selling SER lists to blackhats you can see that there is a higher rate of cart abandonment between HTTP and HTTPS.

    Of course, the right thing to do is to test, test, test. Do a split test by running HTTP only for a week, and then run HTTPS only for a week and see what the difference is. Personally, I have seen the difference in conversions by securing any website that sells something.
  • 1linklist1linklist FREE TRIAL Linklists - VPM of 150+ - http://1linklist.com
    Yep, this is definitely going to become a signal. However its not a make or break kind of thing.

    IE: The only situation where this would make a noticeable difference is if both you, and your competitors site have equivalant link profiles and on-page, but one of you has SSL and the other does not.
  • davbeldavbel UK
    It's just a LOL from Google

    Make SEOs waste money and time on things that don't really matter, rather than them concentrating on things that will get better ranking.

    At best it is a "light-weight" (google's words) indicator out of more than 200 other ranking factors.  Rather than worrying about SSL (unless you're dealing with personally identifiable info) you should be spending time on stuff that will actually make a difference. 

    Just Sayin'
  • MorphManMorphMan British Expat lost in S.E Asia
    ^^ exactly ^^
  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    edited August 2014
    But even if it doesnt matter for SEO at all, it matters if you believe in internet privacy and/or internet security, which I do. If a site has https then it's a plus for me.

    A good browser plugin is HTTPS everywhere which defaults to https if available. I think Google are generally arseholes, but this is a good step if more people take up SSL.
  • EiffelEiffel

    Here is a Free SSL provider:

    https://cert.startcom.org

    Here is the cheapest SSL provider I found:

    https://cheapsslsecurity.com/sslproducts/domainvalidatedssl.html

  • KaineKaine thebestindexer.com
    @Eiffel merci ;)
  • derdorderdor
    Eiffel

    I stongly suggest NOT to use startssl on your sites. (though very good for testing & development)
    It has compatibility issues with some browsers and with some OS.

    Comodo is the way to go. PositiveSSL has everything Google required which are TLS & 2048bit encryption



  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    Oh, one thing nobody has mentioned is that https does seem to slow your sites down a bit. I assume that the 'boost' that Google claims to give to https sites is given more preference than the new higher ping times :D
  • EiffelEiffel

    @derdor

    Thank you ;) But, it's free...

    Like this one:

    http://www.cacert.org/

    HOWEVER, there is a security WARNING of the certificate with Opera, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc...

    Have a look by yourself:

    https://www.cacert.org/

    It is free ;)

    @spunko2010

    Not so much, please, test by yourself With HTTPS and Without:

    http://tools.pingdom.com

    http://www.webpagetest.org

    http://gtmetrix.com

  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    @eiffel what does 'not so much' mean? You mean it only slightly slows it down? This is what I said. I didn't say it killed the site or made it have 20000ms ping .... The major time difference is the time to exchange the key. There's been loads of A/B testing done on this, Google it

    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1892347/what-is-the-overhead-of-using-https-compared-to-http
  • KaineKaine thebestindexer.com
    edited August 2014
    The best judge: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

    Always work on that:

    image


    image

  • EiffelEiffel

    WARNING with CheapSSLSecurity.com

    I bought a cert with them and I haven't any news after 5 days.

    SCAM or support ranked to the absolute zero level?

    I just asked refund today.

  • mamadoumamadou
    @Eiffel

    Did you get your refund ?
  • EiffelEiffel
    edited October 2014

    mamadou

    Yes I did. I got my money back. And bought a new SSL cert from my regular cert seller SSLs.com.

    You can compare by yourself for 1 year / 1 cert:

    With a basic RapidSSL Certificate:

    $7.99

    https://cheapsslsecurity.com/rapidssl/rapidsslcertificate.html

    $9.95

    https://www.ssls.com/geotrust-ssl-certificates/rapidssl.html

    With a basic Comodo EV SSL Certificate:

    $129.00

    https://cheapsslsecurity.com/comodo/evssl.html

    $144.99

    https://www.ssls.com/comodo-ssl-certificates/comodo-ev-ssl.html

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