The leading search engine will reward secure pages with better listings in search results. Google also gave some tips to help webmasters get started.
The news Google announced in its Webmaster Central Blog on Wednesday, caused a stir: Starting now, SSL-secured pages will be positively considered in the search results.
Google is already using HTTPS pages for its own products such as email or the cloud storage "Drive". And from now on the search engine will treat encryption as a positive ranking signal in external sites as well, according to the blog post.
At first HTTPS will only be a minor factor among the many components that are considered when evaluating a website. But in the long term, the search engine will reward safety-conscious webmasters and gradually put more weight to websites using HTTPS in their address bar. This way Google wants to give site
operators a transition period to set up encryption.
For a website to run under a HTTPS address, it must be secured with a SSL certificate. Google gives site operators a few tips for getting started:
- Webmaster should decide which certificates are appropriate for them.
- It recommends using high quality certificates with the highest encryption possible.
- When setting up the page, webmasters should make sure that the HTTPS sites are not blocked for crawlers.