Google has announced that it will start rolling out a new HTTPS report in Search Console. The ad came via Google Search in the central block and indicated that the search engine expects the launch process to take several months.
“One of the common requests we heard from you was to provide more information about your site’s HTTPS status and make it easier to understand which pages are not being served over HTTPS, and why not,” Google said in a blog post.
This new report will show how many URLs indexed on your site are HTTP and how many are HTTPS. Currently only available for domain properties and HTTPS URL prefix sites.
HTTP and HTTPS protocols are similar, but HTTPS uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt and sign requests and responses, making it the more secure option.
HTTPS helps protect networks and users against website spoofing, eavesdropping, and man-in-the-middle attacks. It does this by encrypting the connection between the user’s computer/device and the website being visited, thus ensuring the integrity of the information being sent.
Most websites already use HTTPS
Currently, 95% of traffic to Google is encrypted This number has increased steadily since 2014 when Google first announced it would be taken into account in search engine rankings.
The HTTPS report will also list issues that prevent pages from being published as HTTPS. This usually happens for one of two reasons: either the page has an expired, invalid, or missing SSL certificate, or it calls unsecured third-party resources (eg images, CSS, and Javascript).
Other errors preventing them from serving as HTTP could be caused by a canonical HTTP page, HTTPS pages with redirects, a sitemap that directs robots to an HTTP page, and HTTPS URLs listed in the robots.txt file.
The report will help identify underperforming pages and improve UX
Digital marketers and SEO professionals will find value in this new report, as HTTPS is a confirmed Google ranking signal.
By providing them with the ability to check the HTTP/HTTPS status of a page from Search Console, Google can help them resolve the issues causing the HTTPS URL indexing error.
HTTPS protocols also provide a better user experience than their non-secure counterparts. Many browsers, including Chrome and Firefox, now use indicators to alert Internet users of unsafe websites.
HTTPS usage is also included in Google’s Core Web Vitals, the set of metrics that measure UX in terms of load speed, interactivity, intrusive interstitials, and visual stability.
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