Google has announced on their googleblog a deadline of July 2018 as the date for when Chrome will begin explicitly warning users if a site is insecure.
Over 50% of Internet browsers worldwide are Chrome which means that this will have a significant effect on web publishers.
On current versions of Chrome, if you visit a non-secure (http) website you will see an information icon on the left of the website address, clicking on this icon will display a security warning. As of july 2018 Google Chrome will explicitly mark all websites that are not secure (https) with the words ‘not secure’.
Furthermore google have announced that sites that are secure (https) will rank higher on their search engine results.
Advantages of HTTPS over HTTP
The advantages of an HTTPS URL over an HTTP URL are that:
- HTTPS is much safer than unencrypted HTTP URLs
- Websites using HTTPS URLs appear higher in search engines page rankings
- HTTPS will not display Google Chrome’s security warning.
What to do Next
Assuming your website is hosted on my server, get in touch to have your hosting package upgraded to https.
How much will it cost?
Unlike many others companies out there, I believe in a fair deal, especially with my clients. The SSL certificates that I use are provided by Let’s Encrypt, a certificate authority that provides free X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security encryption. The only charge incurred is a one off charge to cover the time taken to install the certificates onto your server and configure any http calls to your site to be redirected to the https version. There is no annual increase on your hosting package.