Google lowers search ranking of websites that don't use encryption

August 07, 2014

Websites that aren’t encrypting connections with their visitors may get a lower ranking on Google’s search engine, a step the company said it is taking to promote better online security practices.The move is designed to spur developers to implement TLS (Transport Layer Security), which uses a digital certificate to encrypt traffic, signified by a padlock in most browsers and “https” at the beginning of a URL.As Google scans Web pages, it takes into account certain attributes, such as whether a Web page has unique content, to determine where it will appear in search rankings. It has added the use of https into those signals, although it will be a “lightweight” one and applies to about 1 percent of search queries now, wrote Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, both Google webmaster trends analysts, in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2462680/google-lowers-search-ranking-of-websites-that-dont-use-encryption.html#tk.rss_all