For quite a long time, it has been old news that websites that do not have ‘https://’, being an SSL certificate for a website, will be marked as ‘not secure’ by Google and Google Chrome in the web browser. A date of when the change has not occurred until recently, for which Google have stated in a recent blog post that such a change will take place in June 2018. As well as this, Google have started sending out notifications to website owner’s search consoles to warn them if their website does not yet have an SSL certification and https://.
Http ‘Not Secure’ Deadline – June 2018
Such information from Google should not come to the community as a surprise. For years, Google has been pushing websites to use https:// and an SSL certificate to improve the user experience web users have online. If the data transferred between the hosting and the web user is encrypted and secure, there is less attacks to personal data resulting in a better browsing experience.
To begin with, Google stated that the SEO of a website would be slightly affected if they did not have https://. After this, Google put more SEO emphasis on the change and finally chose to make websites without http:// as ‘Not Secure’ in Google Chrome, as made apparent below:
This represents the final ‘step’ Google can implement to push websites into adopting https for their websites.
What is extremely interesting, though, is the fact that Google have stated just how little websites are still adopting SSL certificates. From Google’s recent blog post:
- Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected
- Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is now protected
- 81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default
It begs beyond belief how there are still 19 websites in the top 100 sites on the web that still do not see the need for an SSL certificate. On top of this, the statistics make clear just how much of the web still have not implemented https onto their sites.
What Should You Do?
Get https and an SSL certificate as soon as possible.
Having a website that is not secure from a web browser’s perspective will not help your website with retaining website and builiding a trusting relationship between you and your web traffic. It will also cause the SEO of your website to dip, compared to competitor websites that have https.
Even though making a website secure with an SSL certificate usually results in an additional cost with the hosting platform you are using, such as GoDaddy, HostGator etc., the cost deficit should not be enough to turn you off implementing it. It is a no brainer – you need to get an SSL certificate onto your website soon otherwise your website will get continually punished.
