Dear 4GoodHosting customer, now google is suggesting that everyone buy a SSL certificate for their website; in yet another way they are declaring it will soon give websites a small boost in rankings. They are using this with the excuse that such websites are less vulnerable to giving up site passwords via unencrypted network traffic that your website generates as pages traverse across the internet.
We are not excited nor promoting this; hoping that we sell more SSL certificates to our customers. We generally think google has too much power already to be calling such absurd shots anyhow. And we barely make any profit on our SSLs, as they are already priced quite near rock bottom. http://4goodhosting.com/sslcertificates.html
We however, just want to express on our blog, not only this 'insight' into google's next ranking algorithm, but we just want to show you a sampling of how a lot of people out there feel about this 'non-content'-related google search engine ranking factor:
List of some intelligent and eloquent tweets on the topic:
The information on my site wouldn’t change if it were switched to https, so should https really be a ranking signal? — Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski)
I wonder how many people at Google today are laughing at everyone ready to jump through hoops again. Next “Now we want floating snowflakes.” — Melissa Fach (@SEOAware)
Google launches domain registrar. Google encourages use of SSL for SEO that are a massive pain to buy. Next, Google starts selling SSL… — Ben Hall (@Ben_Hall)
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Should have invested in the SSL company instead of sinking all my money into that lousy Google authorship photo service. — Cyrus Shepard (@CyrusShepard)
I suspect it won’t be long before we start seeing secure certificate ads with “Get your Google ranking boost with our SSL certs!” — Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar)
Today is a day I wish I was in the SSL Certificate business. — lorenbaker (@lorenbaker)
Wonder what graph of SSL certificate sales will look like June-Sep for providers — Chris Gilchrist (@hitreach)
@RavenJon if G was really that behind SSL, they’d allow us to switch our sites without it being considered a site “move” #justsayin — Rae Hoffman (@sugarrae)
@rustybrick it’s just added cost for small businesses, and many have no idea what SSL requires if they don’t run e-commerce sites — Derek Edmond (@DerekEdmond)
