All websites that have the traditional method of hosting: a standard package without a certificate of security, will be marked plainly on Google Search Results as “Not Secure”.

If your website falls into this category, it will simply have the http:// in front of it, rather than the https://. Google has been encouraging website owners to change their websites over to secure sites for the past few years, giving owners of secure sites more value and ranking them higher in the search engines. Now, it is imperative that all websites are secure.

Now for the bad news, moving your website to a secure hosting package isn’t easy. All pages have to correctly forwarded from their old address of http://samplepage.com/page4 to its new address of for example https://samplepage.com/page4. Redirects must be set up correctly for pages, images, and other files.

With the new stated restrictions, statics now show that:

• Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now secure
• Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is now secure
• 81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default

Google stated on their blog:

“To help users browse the web safely, Chrome indicates connection security with an icon in the address bar. Historically, Chrome has not explicitly labeled HTTP connections as non-secure. Beginning in January 2017 (Chrome 56), we’ll mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure.”

They followed this statement up, which you can read here, with this comment:

“Our plan to label HTTP sites more clearly and accurately as non-secure will take place in gradual steps, based on increasingly stringent criteria. Starting January 2017, Chrome 56 will label HTTP pages with password or credit card form fields as “not secure,” given their particularly sensitive nature.

In following releases, we will continue to extend HTTP warnings, for example, by labeling HTTP pages as “not secure” in Incognito mode, where users may have higher expectations of privacy. Eventually, we plan to label all HTTP pages as non-secure, and change the HTTP security indicator to the red triangle that we use for broken HTTPS.”

Few people want to click on a website that clearly and explicitly states that it is “Not Secure”.

To secure your website with a formal certificate and to re-direct all old non-secure URLs, contact us today. In the last 3 months alone, we have moved over 30 websites to a secure standing with Google. The process isn’t as easy as buying a secure certificate, but with professional assistance, your website can be transferred with secure credentials.

About the Author: Pamela Ravenwood is a digital marketing strategist and SEO specialist with SEO Essential Solutions located in Sedona, Arizona.

The post Websites Without HTTPS Will Be Marked Unsecure Starting This Year appeared first on Integrated Marketing Services.