You’ve probably heard something about HTTPS and how your website should implement it. Do you really know what HTTPS is? Using HTTPS instead of HTTP makes it impossible for someone to intercept data sent between a site and a browser. Very important for both users and site owners!
Maybe you have seen this in action; look at the address bar in your browser and look for the lock icon on the left-hand side. Is the lock closed? Then the connection is secure. Is it open or is there another type of icon or message? Then it’s not secure and vulnerable to attack. Using a site over a non-secure connection means hackers/criminals could intercept the data you send to the site, like your password and email address.
HTTPS is a must for any type of site, even if you own the bakery around the corner and don’t send or request sensitive data via your website.
And now a word from Google: December 15, 2015
“Today we’d like to announce that we’re adjusting our indexing system to look for more HTTPS pages. Specifically, we’ll start crawling HTTPS equivalents of HTTP pages, even when the former are not linked to from any page.”