Everyone knows that being in a secure environment conveys more trust to the user, so it is only logical that Google would sooner or later make this one of the metrics that define or influence your ranking.
Buckle up and open your wallets, friends, because obtaining an https security certificate and having all your content optimized considering the restrictions and needs that come with it has become mandatory since August 2014. This is stated in the article written on the Google Webmasters Central Blog.
In an effort to make the internet increasingly secure for users, Google takes a step beyond simply placing all its services in a secure environment (gently hiding user data for itself and preventing the knowledge of web analysis tools that only serve to help produce better sites—of course, it continues to do something very unknown with this data, like sharing it with the U.S. government, but that’s another story).
Setting aside the political and controversial issue, what Google seeks is to favor sites that, like it, offer all their content in a secure environment, thus ensuring users a traffic free from fake sites that use phishing techniques or manipulate user data.
The ideal world would indeed be one where we all navigated in a 100% secure environment? I fear for the freedom of access to information, but as a SEO consultant and site optimization specialist, I feel compelled to make use of this privileged information. What do you think about this?