New Google SSL Rules

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   Butterfly67posted 7 years ago

   It seems that from July 2018 Google Chrome will be marking all sites that do not have an SSL certificate as 'not secure'. For your own personal websites have you been buying an SSL certificate for them or just leaving them?
   Do you think it makes a difference in search rankings to have an SSL certificate on your site?
   I have added one to one of my sites that gets most of its traffic from Google but am in two minds whether to add it to all of them that merit the cost.
   Anyone have any thoughts?

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      Barbara Kayposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I haven't heard about this. I'll have to check further into this.

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      makingamarkposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      see https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/08/chrom … ot-secure/
      
      Google has been making it very clear for about the last three years that websites need to be secure if they are going to rank as authoritative in Google. They have been making changes slowly.
      
      My understanding is that it is already factored into the algorithm and has been for some time.
      
      The change made from 1 July is just going to make it very explicit to website visitors which webmasters are not on top of their technology
      
      Just as arriving at certain American newspapers at present indicates that they have only just woken up to GDPR - despite the fact there was a two year transition period.

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         Butterfly67posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I had a feeling it might be already in the algorithm. I have one site that pretty much only gets traffic from Bing so I'm wondering if putting an SSL on that may get it traffic from Google too...

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      Marketing Meritposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I upgraded all of my 12 websites last year to SSL. However, my hosting company, A2, provide a free 'Let's Encrypt' SSL certificate, so it didn't cost anything. The free version is sufficient for my needs, but you do need to keep an eye on the expiry date.
      Yes, I believe it's important as, SEO aside, people are more likely to visit a secure site than one which is marked as not being secure.
      Check with your host to see if they offer the free SSL option.

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   theraggededgeposted 7 years ago

   Had an email from Hostgator saying they are offering a free SSL cert. to existing customers. Details to follow.

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      Butterfly67posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      That's interesting theraggededge as I am with Hostgator and just paid for one for one of my sites but I think it may depend what plan you are on so I will investigate further as it may be worth upgrading as I have about 20 sites.

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   RonElFranposted 7 years ago

   You can read the Google blog post on this at https://security.googleblog.com/2018/02 … -stay.html . My take is that almost everyone who sees a "Not secure" warning when they try to access an http site will immediately click away. So IMO this is a death knell for http sites.
   
   I have four independent Wordpress sites; three of them are are subdomains of my main site. My web host, BlueHost, provides free SSL for the top domain, but not for the subdomains. Also, BlueHost does not support the free Let's Encrypt. SSL certificates are available for as little as $8.88 per year per site. My problem is that the sites on my subdomain produce no income, so I'm not going to spend money on them. I'm thinking about taking them back to free Wordpress.com, which is already https.

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   Butterfly67posted 7 years ago

   Ok so even though I didn't receive an email about getting a free SSL it appears I can activate one on my sites as I found out from this post https://www.hostgator.com/blog/2018-goo … me-update/

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