Google has decided to make the web a more secure place.
That’s generally a good thing, but I wanted you to know how they’re doing this and how it affects you.
Chrome is the most popular browser in the world (it’s made by Google) by far, and that gives them a great opportunity to target the masses.
They are using the browser’s address bar to highlight websites that don’t use SSL certificates. These are the things that give sites a padlock to show that they are secure. It will start when the browser is automatically updated.
Traditionally, https has been associated with financial transactions, but now Google wants to warn its users when people are browsing any website that collects information from its user by placing a red warning triangle against your website name and marking it as ‘Not Secure’ also in red.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair because people have different levels of understanding about security, and your website customers and visitors could easily be scared off if they thought your website was ‘not secure’.
SEO makes it so
And as if that wasn’t enough incentive, they made it a ranking factor so that your website will be rewarded in the search engines if you had SSL.
Google is ‘it’ in a very big playground, and taking your ball home isn’t going to make a proverbial droplet.
So my recommendation is to get SSL’d up and enjoy the benefits:
- more trust from your customers
- better security for your customers’ data
- better search engine rankings
Switching to SSL not only turns off the warning, it places https in front of your domain and displays a padlock to show that your site is 100% secure.
And you can expect Google to come down harder on those that sit it out.
I’ve done more of these in the past month than in the whole 17 years I’ve been working on websites, and I’ve done all my own websites too, so I am practising what I preach.
It sounds expensive?
The certificate is reasonably priced given the benefits, and as it’s Christmastime, I am offering to install this for all my customers free of charge if ordered and paid before December 25. It would normally be £50.
You’ll just pay for the certificate (which is currently £100 a year) and I’ll do all the work to install it on your server.
Just fill in your details below to get started.