In August 2014 Google announced that it would start to use HTTPS as a search ranking factor. In doing so it was trying to ‘encourage’ website owners to migrate to SSL in an effort to improve the privacy and security of the Internet as a whole. Back then it affected only 1% of global queries and carried much less weight than other factors.
As such, Intergage decided not to rush into this and see how it progressed. After all, we knew Google would not jeopardise good user experience over a secure site.
Google said that over time it may decide to strengthen this signal to encourage more website owners to switch - and we have been keeping a close eye on this. While the adoption of SSL has grown among bigger sites on the web - and there is a small correlation between HTTPS and improved rankings (probably due to the larger sites adopting it) - we still would not recommend it solely for the ranking benefit as the whole process is costly and resource-intensive.
There is now another reason to switch which is more compelling. Google has accelerated the urgency of switching to HTTPS, not through increasing ranking factors, but by influencing how non-secure sites appear in the Google Chrome browser.
In the very near future Google’s Chrome browser will display a red warning triangle in the address bar for ALL pages that DO NOT have HTTPS set up.
That means whether or not your site is an e-commerce site, if it is not using HTTPS your entire site will be flagged in the address bar of Google chrome as being non-secure. While this will not affect your rankings, it will affect what your site visitor thinks about your site.
To the average user, your website will look at best broken and at worst, dangerous to use!
How is Google rolling this out?
As a result of this announcement from Google, Intergage has decided to provide our CMS users with a FREE SSL certificate (previously worth £250-£550) to make sure they do not fall foul of this browser issue. Before we implement your Certificate and switch your site over we will need to perform an audit on your site, and again, we will be offering this FREE-of-charge.
If you would like to claim your FREE SSL certificate, please click here to complete the form to book your FREE SSL Audit.
Instead of a horrible red triangle, get yourself a nice green padlock!
While we can control our software and how it uses URLs on the site, what we cannot do is anticipate how users have updated content and what other resources may have been used throughout the site. Part of the audit process is to identify any CSS files, JavaScript files, widgets and images that may have been added and need to be amended to work with HTTPS. This step is critical in ensuring your site works correctly after the switch.
While we can offer you a free certificate, unfortunately, there is a large amount of work involved in successfully switching your site to use an SSL certificate. The FREE audit will tell us the size of the job in hand and what chargeable time may be required to switch your site successfully to SSL.
We anticipate that it may cost up to £600 to address all of the incompatibilities found in the audit and then switch the site over. This is a one-off cost and based upon what we find in the audit and as such, is for guidance only.
HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is an internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of your users' data between each user's computer and the site. For example, when a user enters data into a form on your site in order to subscribe to updates or purchase a product, HTTPS protects that user's personal information between the user and the site. Users expect a secure online experience when providing data via a website. It is important to adopt HTTPS in order to protect your users' connections to your website.
Data sent using HTTPS is secured via Transport Layer Security protocol (TLS), which provides three key layers of protection: