You may have heard that Google announced that HTTPS is a going to affect search rankings and I am urging people to ensure their site is HTTPS…
For those of you who have no idea what HTTPS even is, let us go back to basics.
To understand HTTPS you need to understand HTTP…A lot of websites are currently HTTP. Wondering what HTTP is? Well you may have noticed it in the url bar… http://www.
According to Wikipedia, “The Hypertext Transfer Protocol [HTTP] is an application protocol for distributed, collaborative, and hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.”
Basically it is used for transferring data from a web server to a browser to view web pages.
With HTTP, data is not encrypted, which means it can easily be caught by criminals and hackers who want to capture data being passed between the two systems.
You may have seen those warnings come up in your browser saying things like “this connection is not secure, are you sure you want to proceed” whenever you visit a HTTP site.
The S in HTTPS stands for secure.
Previously Google wanted ecommerce sites to have HTTPS for their payment page as without HTTPS, any data passed is insecure.
Well Google have now stated security is a massive priority for them and have said that sites that are not HTTPS will be affected in ranking… We are already seeing the affects of this, however, some Web Masters are stating that it is affecting less than 1% of global searches. That said, everyone is acknowledging that it will become an even bigger impact on rankings in the future.
I am urging all my clients to get HTTPS now! A lot of people are already moving over to HTTPS, for the pure sake of having a more secure site.
All you need to do is contact your existing website host and ask for them to initiate the change to HTTPS. There will be a charge, but at least in my opinion it will be a small investment to future proof your site.
For most of my clients you need to contact Jonathan of Blue Circle IT and he will sort this all out for you
