Google is constantly trying to ensure that our web experience becomes more reliable and secure. With that in mind, Google has been updating its Chrome Browser to reach new limits of security and verify the authenticity of sites we visit.
Starting with version 68 of the Google Chrome engine to be released in the month of July, 2018; it will explicitly flag all websites that are secure or not secure and this could highly impact on your website ranking if you do not have a security certificate in place.
The impact on your business:
As a visitor or site owner, security should always be considered important, and through the updated Chrome browser, Google aims to create a safer environment for internauts. Basically, any website that is NOT secured with a Security Certificate SSL will be flaged by Google as Not Secure. Through this web browser and jointly with the Google Search Engine, the negative impact on your business could be very grave.
The first thing visitors will see, will be a "Not Secure" status right next to the web address. This will make some visitors to your site a bit weary about sending information over your web forms, or worse yet, complete ecommerce transactions via an unsecured website. Basically with an unsecured website your visitors, sales, sign ups, purchases and business in general could all drop.
Google will also give higher priority to websites that are secure in the search ranking. meaning that websites that are marked as "Secure" will be ranked closer to the top, or at least be given a priority of some sort. Wheras websites that are marked as "Not secure" will be pushed down, and the impact can be greater, depending on the type of content or service you provide.
Keep in mind that this relates primarily to the Google Chrome web browser and Google search engine. It isn't clear on how it would affect your website if you do a search under a different engine or different web browser. If you use Safari with yahoo, or Microsoft Edge/Explorer with Bing, or even Firefox with duckduckgo, chances are you won't notice the difference right away.
Things you can do to secure your website:
The first thing is Encyption. You will need to encrypt your website or server with an SSL certificate. To understand what the SSL Certificate does, you need to understand the general concept of Encryption. Basically it is a mathematical process to convert data into a scrambled code to prevent unauthorized access while the data is in transit. The number of bits in the encryption form the size of the security key. The most common security bit configurations are 40-bit, 56-bit and 256-bit. The larger the encryption bit, the stronger the security code token. However there can be other configurations (multiples of 8).
The Digital Certificate of the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) variety is a technology that forms an encrypted link between the web server and your browser. Thanks to SSL, the information transmited from a website is secured as it is encrypted while it sends and receives packets of data. Think of it as paddlocks being activated everytime the HTTPS protocol is called forward by the browser, allowing you to tunnel through to the destination, and keeping away intruders. An SSL Certificate has been proven to generate trust with customers as their data is safely transmitted over the Internet through your secure website.
Things to look forward to:
In an effort to make sure your website follows into Google's new security practices, the BZVweb team is diligently working on offering FREE basic SSL security encryption on most of our web hosting plans. The platform based certificates will add the primary defenses against hackers as well as to keep the unsecure bit-flag by Google from damaging your rank.
Dedicated, Managed and Virtual Private Servers will still be required to implement a separate SSL Certificate. Shared, Cloud and DiY hosting plans will be periodically updated to offer basic SSL encryption. While this push will help many, we strongly recommend you secure your website with a certificate beyond the Basic level.
