All websites bearing the HTTP protocol will now be marked as ‘Not Secure’ and prominently highlight this in its URL bar in July this year. With the launch of Chrome 68, Google will warn users that all websites not using HTTPS i.e. Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure are not secure to browse.
Over last few years, Google has strongly advocated for the use of HTTPS to help keep your browsing data safe from anybody who could be spying on your web traffic while it’s in transit between your browser and a server. With Chrome 62, Google already started marking all HTTP sites that had data entry fields as insecure and even back in 2016, it already started showing the same warning for all sites that asked for passwords and credit cards.
Google is not the first one to implement this security feature on their browser. Mozilla Firefox had started work on the same back in December last year, again due to the increasing adoption of HTTPS.
Google has been pushing webmasters to make the change to non-secure web sites a for years now – including hinting at small rankings boost to further incentivize the shift. The campaign has proved successful. According to their blog post.
- Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected.
- Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is now protected.
- 81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default.
Chrome’s new interface will help users understand that all HTTP sites are not secure, and continue to move the web towards a secure HTTPS web by default,” Google said in a statement.
The major benefits of a HTTPS certificate are:
- Customer information, like credit card numbers, is encrypted and cannot be intercepted
- Visitors can verify you are a registered business and that you own the domain
- Customers are more likely to trust and complete purchases from sites that use HTTPS
- Adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site will give you a minor ranking boost
