It's been almost two years (August 2014) since Google announced that HTTPS was a ranking signal. Speculation ran rampant, as usual, with some suggesting there was little or no benefit to switching (and possibly significant risk) while others rushed to sell customers on making the HTTPS switch. Two years later, I believe the data speaks for itself — Google is fighting, and winning, a long war.
As of late June, our tracking data shows that 32.5% (almost one-third) of page-1 Google results now use the "https:" protocol. The tiny bump on the far left (above "A-14" = August 2014) is the original HTTPS algorithm update. The much larger bump in the middle is when Wikipedia switched to HTTPS. This goes to show the impact that one powerhouse can have on SERPs, but that's a story for another time.
It's possible that people are simply switching to HTTPS for their own reasons, but I strongly believe that this data suggests Google's PR campaign is working. They've successfully led search marketers and site owners to believe that HTTPS will be rewarded, and this has drastically sped up the shift. An algorithm update is risky and can cause collateral damage. Convincing us that change is for our own good is risk-free for Google. Again, Google is fighting the long war.
This is as close to confirmation as we can reasonably expect, so let's assume we showed up to the right ballgame and our tickets aren't counterfeit.
Ok, so about one-third of results use HTTPS. Simple arithmetic says that two-thirds don't. Projecting the trend forward, we've got about a year and a half (16–17 months) before HTTPS hits 50%. So, is it time to panic? No, probably not, but here's the piece of the puzzle you may be missing.
Google has to strike a balance. If they reward sites with HTTPS (or dock sites without it) when very few sites are using it, then they risk a lot of collateral damage to good sites that just haven't made the switch. If, on the other hand, they wait until most sites have switched, a reward is moot. If 100% of sites are on HTTPS and they reward those sites (or dock the 0% without it), nothing happens. They also have to be careful not to set the reward too high, or sites might switch simply to game the system, but not too low, or no one will care. However I feel about Google on any given day, I acknowledge that their job isn't easy.
If rewarding HTTPS too heavily when adoption is low is risky and rewarding it when adoption is too high is pointless, then, naturally, the perfect time to strike is somewhere in the middle. At 30% adoption, we're starting to edge into that middle territory. When adoption hits something like 50–60%, I suspect it will make sense for Google to turn up the algorithmic volume on HTTPS.
Of the top 20 sites in our tracking data, only 7 have gone full HTTPS. That's 35%, which is pretty close to our overall numbers across all sites. If Google can convince most of those sites to switch, they'll have covered quite a bit of ground. Focusing on big players and convincing them to switch puts pressure on smaller sites.
Am I telling you to make the switch? No. While I think there are good reasons to move to HTTPS for some sites and I think most of Google's motives are sincere on this subject, I also believe Google has been irresponsible about downplaying the risks.
Any major change to sitewide URLs is risky, especially for large sites. If you weigh the time, money, and risk of the switch against what is still a small algorithmic boost, I think it's a tough sell in many cases. These risks are not theoretical — back in May, Wired.com wrote up the many problems they've encountered during their HTTPS switch, a switch that they've since paused to reconsider.
Like any major, sitewide change, you have to consider the broader business case, costs, and benefits. I suspect that pressure from Google will increase, especially as adoption increases, and that we're within a year of a tipping point where half of page-1 results will be running on HTTPS. Be aware of how the adoption rate is moving in your own industry and be alert, because I suspect we could see another HTTPS algorithm update in the next 6–12 months.
Not sure you can just conclude "not an algorithm update" because of "lack of jump and plateau" and linear progression of https website count in top10.
I think you could have pushed your analysis deeper. Instead of just counting websites which have HTTPS every month, it would be better to check if this new HTTPS website in page #1 was already on page #1 without HTTP or if it's coming from deeper SERP. Also, if you have SERP history of 10k kw, you can detect when a website switched to HTTPS and check if there is a minor improvement on all its rankings. The count of HTTPS website alone can't demonstrate an algorithm update.
But anyway it is a useful piece of information to know we have more websites using HTTPs every day. I also tend to think HTTPS is a minor boost (if any) like page speed. I think switching sooner is better than later, but it shouldn't be done in a hury. Regarding big website, they are not forced to switch everything to HTTPS in one shot, they can do it part by part, and watch for consequences before going further.
@Scott -- Respectfully, that's exactly what I said in the post. The data suggests that Google's PR campaign for HTTPS has been effective and people are gradually switching, not that any HTTPS-friendly update is improving rankings. The trick, and this is where I think it's dangerous to ignore the trend, is that as adoption increases, Google's freedom to increase the ranking boost will increase.
Perhaps it would be more precise to say that this pattern of increase isn't consistent with a handful of HTTPS-friendly algorithm updates. If Google had made a few HTTPS updates, we'd expect more of a step pattern, not a gradual upward trend. We know that the one confirmed HTTPS update caused a small step up, which backs up this general theory. It's possible that Google also rolled out an algorithm update during the same period that Wikipedia made the switch, but that's nearly impossible to separate.
The problem with analyzing the ranking boost directly is that rankings are very volatile (the biggest lesson I've learned from running the MozCast project). If a page/site that previously wasn't ranking appeared in the top 10 with an "https:" URL, there are many reasons that could happen. If we know a site switched to HTTPS, we could theoretically look at just that site, but any major sitewide switch tends to cause short-term ranking fluctuations. By the time those fluctuations even out, too much has changed to get an accurate read on the situation.
When Wikipedia rolled out HTTPS, I did analyze the rankings of all "https:" URLs before and after and saw a slight improvement, but it's unclear whether that was due to an overall rankings boost or just the power of Wikipedia URLs in general (and they fact that they rank, on average, higher than most sites). That's why I've stuck to total HTTPS adoption for the long-term trend.
I have been skeptical about switching my sites to https because people I trust reported significant drops in their Adsense revenue after making the switch. I don't think it is wise to risk possible migration problems, your Adsense revenue and the time/cost involved for a rankings boost that people argue about.
Just checked your link, it was 2 years ago. Adsense probably evolved since, they did it while adsense was saying : "We don't recommend that publishers with HTTP sites convert their sites to HTTPS unless they have a strong reason to do so.". It is no more the case. Would be great to have up to date feedback.
Yes, it is two years old. Still, don't want to convert my site with the "hope" that they are now doing a better job. I am waiting to see people say... "I converted my site and my Adsense revenue didn't change." I have not seen that yet. Too much money is involved to take chances.
Up to date feedback: flipped my primary eight AdSense sites to https this spring, experienced no traffic drops (in fact traffic went up across the board but I am not attributing that to SSL) and no AdSense drop except for an expected change as I swapped out about 30% of my AdSense impressions this year to Facebook Audience Network. This is over aggregate four million or so pageviews. The first 60 days before I added the FAN, revenue was pretty much the same - didn't go up, didn't go down.
Biggest issues I experienced were convincing other ad networks to stop serving insecure images and/or pixels.
It just shows you how powerful Google are. They throw a hint about something boosting SERP position by a minuscule (MAYBE) and everyone falls over themselves to obey them. https is likely much more beneficial for the website user than the website owner and rightfully so.
If someday HTTPS gets more relevant than typical http, Google would lost some of their democratic way of SEO, the people who can cost ther HTTPS would have more benefits from the people who couldn´t afford.
I'm really glad I've read this post, really had no idea that https was a ranking signal for Google. I've just read the article from Wired too and I just can imagine that if it's hard for a big company, how would it be for a small one who can't assume the cost of all of this?
I think Google should rethink about some changes they're making cause, even though they're also a company, they we've a lot of people that indirectly count on them too =/.
Anyway, thank you very much for such an informative post, much appreciated!
i'm still a bit bitter about Google trying to force people into https with the promise of benefits which really didn't exists.
I have no argument with that sentiment.
Years passed, but we have same ugly HTTPS snippets in Google SERP.
Watching your own industry is an important suggestion.
In our industry 9 of 10 sites on page 1 for a lot of important keywords have gone full HTTPS. If you are the only one not making the switch, you could look like an amateur.
And if your customers are techies you should have a close eye on your CTR, too. Perhaps being the only "unsafe" site makes your customers consider other options?
So, it is not so much about rankings for me, it is more about the trust of your customers.
Tracking within your own industry and competition is definitely a smart move.
I am wondering why https and microdata URL mark-up display seem to be mutually exclusive. The site I look after switched to https in February. I have noticed that since the switch, our URLs in search results either show as microdata-prettified like www.greenpeople.co.uk > shop › by product › skin care › moisturiser or https, like https://www.greenpeople.co.uk/shop/by-product/natu.... I have been looking for a while now but still have not seen any https URLs in search results that contain the microdata formatting. I am happy to be proven wrong! I just can't work out why Google would not want https URLs to be pretty too.
I know a few people in the marketing industry that were annoyed SSL was kind of forced onto us, but I think it's a good thing personally. Better security on the site, less likely that your information is hijacked or stolen, safer transactions. The only thing that is annoying is the cost of getting that damn green bar, those certificates are so expensive, and as far as I can see, there is no need for them to be.
As I see it...if google doesn't have the green bar, they can't expect me to have it either.
Google can penalize you for stuffing too many ads above the fold but then stuff too many ads above the fold on their own results, so I'm pretty sure that's not a safe assumption.
Sadly, you have a point there. It is too bad that when it comes to search engines, google has absolutely no competition. Bing and Yahoo search results are so horrible, even my parents in their 70's know not to use them.
I totally agree with you. We have to deal within its own manners and measures.
This question was referenced in an earlier comment, is it better to move a large site at once to HTTPS or move in sections? Can anyone offer the pros and cons of doing this?
HTTPS is ideal for ecommerce or any website that deals sensitive input data like (bank account, email add etc..) having SSL certificate gives proof that your site is safe and not for scamming purposes. It also adds trust to the visitors knowing that your business and site is legit.
Anyone changing to https be very careful. One of my site - http://Mediatimes.com.au/ was moved to https few months back and i ntoiced my PA and DA reduced from original. Overall SEO of the site was badly affected with this change. Finally I had to get rid of it, leading to other set of troubles like https version was indxed by this time. Stay away from migrating to https in most cases.
I look at it from an adoptive perspective. If the user adopts the intent of doing business with secure sites, then I shall adopt the same understanding. Similarly, if a user becomes aware and mute to the idea of search advertisements displayed to the right of Google SERPs, then Google shall "switch it up" and remove it. Users are creatures of habit, and ranking factors go as deep as you subconscious. Directly or indirectly, we can conclude that https sites are ranking higher than non-https sites. Data doesn't lie.
Ohh 30% Great!! In few years it'll cross 50%. Wow!!! Don't mean to offend you Dr. Peter, but let us discuss one thing. HTTPS uses very strong public-key cryptography to encrypt the connection between a client (often a web browser) and a server. Providing the private part of the certificate remains private and there are no other hiccups in implementation, HTTPS is highly secure. But, lots of sites don't need that level of privacy and security. The average blog, for example, doesn't need its public-facing pages encrypted with high-grade cryptography, but Google is a fan of the "security by default" and "HTTPS Everywhere" concept, so I think it's using SEO to incentivize webmasters to implement HTTPS. We all know that HTTPS uses a lot of Server resources, hence a slow website might get outranked from Top 10 positions. Than what?? Should we opt for another service to boost our website's speed?? Sometimes I really feel, a day will come when such things will sidetrack Google.
It is better to turn to your hosting provider and they will provide a tutorial. For example, in mine is made as follows. This in Spanish, sorry, but it is how do.
Yesterday I was searching for it at my providers's blog and there is a lot of information about how to do it!
Help full information about HTTPS.
But still there are 30% - 60% ratio so confuse that we have to suggest all our client to move HTTPS or not because some of them are only information sharing website.
It's nice to see an update on this matter.
If you were to start a new website today - would you always choose https over http?
We are having this discussion at our team right now on a new project. I'm a big fan of going https from the start, while our IT guys are not, since it'll be heavier on the server. I just have a feeling that it will play a role at some point (if not already), so it makes perfect sense to implement it from day 1. But without anything other than a gut-feeling, is it really worth the fight?
Thanks for this interesting data, now I need to see how many of our competitors have HTTPS for the most important keywords.
I think HTTPS will be the standard way to go in the future for ecommerce, especially for new websites. Eventually I think that the ranking boost will be similar to having a mobile or responsive site. However, I completely agree that making a major URL change to pages that rank good is a pretty big scary.
Currently we have HTTPS only for the checkout (where a secure connection really matters). Does anyone have any insights on this compared to a full HTTPS site?
According to me I don't SSL actually make a difference, I have two sites and one of them is doing well in search engines whereas the site which is having SSL is not going good.
I 'll try to explain what that is. It is a protocol level indicating security of your website. It is to install an SSL certificate that identifies the company and its tax data (email, address, contact details, etc.). As a result, it gives more security to the website, not hacker -level security, but the user. To get a cash SSL certificate must generalize an accurate stating that your business is real and not scamming anyone. It is essential in e- commerce. I hope I have clarified the issue.
I find it very difficult to explain in English.
It could be a pain to change to HTTPS. I supposed it depend of the scope of your site and its positioning. Big sites could suffer from the change, although small sites could pass to HTTPS easily. Google would have to be careful with this pages.
Difficult decision, although it appears that the future will score better https : //. I do not think that it is only by Google , we all know that the issue of security is becoming an essential issue at government level , and that will eventually affect all . For now, for those sites that do not perform e-commerce or security information they need , and they do not want to have to start from scratch in their position , I recommend waiting .
I think it's right people are sceptical about the update as a switch to HTTPS is not simple. I think the most important data is from the original update increase, this gives us an idea of the sort of impact it has, anything after is just showing us the number of sites converting to HTTPS and not that Google is adding weight to the use of it.
1. Will https://www.kredittkort.reviews/ benefit for all the juice http://www.kredittkort.reviews/ get?
2. If I switch a http site to https, will the seo-juice follow or do one have to make redirects?
Thank you for this detailed presentation introducing the importance of https. Though the change is truely important one has to make sure that proper redirects are made and that external urls are gradually changed to https.
Doesn't this just mean that more websites have started using HTTPS? So the same websites are ranking but have installed an SSL, rather than Google increasing the rank of HTTPS websites?
I apologize for my English, we work with the team we have handled different tests migrating to HTTPS and only 30% have seen good results, we continue working a few months more to see if the change goes well we did.
HTTPS top 30% is great.This article to know me and that i feeling good.
Hi all , first thank you because I ayudais much to understand this world, you need to devote as much time to keep abreast of the changes that occur every day . In the end, if you want to devote to this, we 're like medical graduates , you always have to be studying if you want to do something in this sector. Many times we learn from these post , but rarely thank you, today I learned something more . Thank you.
We are just waiting for it to be imperative. It's a potential traffic loss to a small B2B site. Also, we waited until our developer partner had more implementations under their belt. Pantheon has now made it easier to manage as well as CloudFlare. It will happen. Many of us will hold out until it's really necessary. Good read, thanks.
Seeing how HTTPS has its promised benefits, it wouldn't be long before most of the website would officially switch with the security vertical. After all, https provides authenticity and integrity which are the values that internet surfers look for in a website. The challenge however is how you should be able to maintain your SEO when you do the switch.
To be honest, I'd be surprised if 1% of the internet surfers even noticed whether or not they were on a secure site as opposed to a insecure site.
This is my data, not Google's, across a controlled set of 10,000 queries. I'm not sure how you can pick a site, like Amazon, and say that it's skewing the data. If a big site switches, that supports Google's ability to turn up the algorithm, and it matters quite a bit. Amazon's switch is actually very late on this graph and a pretty small bump. Wikipedia's switch had a big impact. The pattern in our data, though, is consistent and steady. We're looking at a consistent 2-year trend across a large and carefully tracked data set.
Dr. Pete -- Out of that 30%, what percentage of sites that have migrated to HTTPS did it correctly and didn't screw it up by creating 4 versions of their websites?
For a big site, making the switch over to https can be such a headache! It's better to start the process sooner rather than later, though.
Another possibility is that those sites that changed to https are websites that undergo an extensive SEO strategy, thus it is not by accident that these sites are on the top of the SERPs. If I am doing some serious SEO campaign for a client, i would recommend to go to https! Nice info that we can use to convince others to change to https!
Very good tip for us. I am Quangle from Vietnam.
After reading your post, i want to change my domain " http://quanglepro.com " to " https ".
But if we change like this, Does it happen 404 page not found? Or affect to my ranking?
I can't say that my move to HTTPS was good for my SEO. Seems we have taken quite a hit over the past few months.
As I said in the article, it's the trend that matters. Yes, 2/3 of page-1 URLs are still "http:", but two years ago, 95% of them were. The balance is shifting, and this trend will continue. At some point, that means the disadvantage of not adopting HTTPS will increase.
2. Alot of sites that are switching to https are doing it for SEO reasons (my guess) and these are also the sites that are working the hardest on their SEO (if they are willing to go through the trouble to switch their site to https to improve their ranking, I'm willing to bet they are also doing alot more stuffs to improve their organic search ranking) and hence their ranking improvement.. BUT, the improvement in their search ranking for more likely due to the other works that they did.
Eventually, at the end of the day, if I am going consider implementing HTTPS for my site simply for SEO, I might ask myself, for the kind of efforts, costs and risks that are required to switch over to HTTPS is there any other SEO stuffs that if I focus on instead, that can yield higher SEO benefits (and for many sites, the answer is usually yes..).
**For my sites, I actually categorized switching over to HTTPS as high efforts and high risks project with potentially low benefits. And of course, this is highly subjective depending on your type of site and the technical skills you have..
I don't really disagree with (1) or (2) - I think that's consistent with what I said in the post. The overall trend indicates that sites are moving to HTTPS (and not that Google has rewarded HTTPS sites), and much of that is because people believe this will be of SEO benefit.
I think caution is perfectly reasonable. My concern, though, is that, as adoption increases, Google will eventually make a move that ups the stakes of not switching. My bigger concern is that that move is probably to happen sooner than we'd like.
Thanks for Sharing interesting topic, this is very important part thanks. :) Ordinarily we gain from these post , however infrequently thank you, today I picked up something more . Much obliged to you.
Great post!! Goog job.Thanks and congratulation!!