Last year, in a previous blog post, we told you that, in October 2017, Google would start flagging unsecured websites that contained form fields with a “Not Secure” warning.
Fast forward many months later. Google has announced that in July 2018 its Chrome browser will start flagging all unsecured websites as “Not Secure”, regardless of their content. History has shown that when Google makes a move like this, other browsers will follow suit.
Is this a bad thing? No. In fact, it’s a good thing.
What makes a site considered “Secure” or “Not Secure” in Google’s eyes? We’re glad you asked.
When you navigate to a site with https in the URL as opposed to just http (no “s”), the browser uses an SSL Certificate to encrypt and decrypt all information going back and forth between you and the server. This prevents a “person in the middle” hacker who may be eavesdropping on your website interaction from seeing what data is being sent back and forth.
Another benefit of using https is that Google considers https as a “Ranking Signal”. This means that having an SSL Certificate on your site is one of the many parameters Google uses in determining your ranking in search results on Google.com.
SSL Certificates are not all the same. There are different types that serve different purposes. Defining all of them here along with the various costs and issuers (sellers of SSL Certificates) would turn this post into nothing short of a white paper and, frankly, doesn’t make for fascinating reading.
If you would like one of our experts to run an audit on your website and make a recommendation for which SSL Certificate is right for you and your website, please contact us.