Post by account_disabled on Nov 29, 2023 3:49:43 GMT
Here’s an example: imagine that you put your credit card details on a website and someone manages to capture the payment halfway. Such a situation could easily happen on an HTTP site.
HTTPs is already a ranking factor
As I said at the beginning of the C Level Executive Email Lists article, Google announced in 2014 the importance of secure transfer protocol (HTTPs) for the ranking of websites in search engine pages.
The quote says:
“We’re also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of that is making sure that websites people access from Google are secure.
For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms.
We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.”
Furthermore, it is mentioned that Google’s intention with the change was to encourage website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPs in order to make the web a more secure place.
So, following this line, to ensure your site does not face any penalty on this ranking factor, just direct them to HTTPs links?
Is it okay to link to HTTP pages?
See the final answer provided by Muller:
“From our point of view, it’s perfectly fine. If those pages are in HTTP, then that’s where you’ll link to. There’s nothing against linking to sites like this. There’s no downside to your site linking to HTTP pages because they’re kind of old or not as cool as HTTPS. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
That is, there is no visible problem in linking to pages that use the HTTP protocol in SEO. In other words, Google will not penalize you for it.
