As you may be aware, Google recently announced that websites accessible via encrypted connections would receive a small advantage in 1% of search results. At that time, we said it wasn’t something to worry about unless you had already done all the things that matter more.
There may of course be other reasons to encrypt the traffic to and from your site, primarily if you handle financial transactions or personal data. For a site that only displays publicly available information, there has really been very little reason to encrypt—until now.
Chrome, which has a very large share of the browser market, will begin displaying a warning if a site does not offer encrypted traffic. A small HTTPS must be present in the address bar; otherwise, Google will mark it with an exclamation mark. Previously, Chrome—and most other browsers—only warned when a protocol was broken or incorrect in some way. Now they will start warning for all kinds of sites, regardless of whether encryption is actually needed.
So, we’re changing our recommendation: there are now reasons to switch to HTTPS, even if they are not purely SEO-related. The problems that previously existed with HTTPS in Google (such as Google largely refusing to index it) seem to be gone. There are two things you need to watch out for: first, make sure all your 301 redirects are correct; second, note that your site may become slightly slower. If you’re already on the edge of being too slow, you might lose some positions due to the additional slowdown.
Our current recommendation: Switch to HTTPS, especially if you have customers who might be sensitive to a small warning in the address bar—but keep an eye on loading times and make sure to manage your redirects properly.
And us? Well, we’ll make sure to fix this site too.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.