SSL is the backbone of our secure Internet and Google wants to help protect your sensitive information as it travels across the world’s computer networks. SSL is essential for protecting your website, even if it doesn’t handle sensitive information like credit cards. It provides privacy, critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users’ personal information, hence the not so gentle push from Google to have it implemented on all sites.
The primary reason why Google insists that SSL is now used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can access it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. This protects it from hackers and identity thieves.
In addition to encryption, a proper SSL certificate also provides authentication of your business to both Google and the website visitor. This means you can be sure that you are sending information to the right server and not to an imposter trying to steal your information.
SSL also provides trust. Web browsers give visual cues, such as a lock icon or a green bar, to make sure visitors know when their connection is secured. This means that they will trust your website more when they see these cues and will be more likely to buy from you. SSL providers will also give you a trust seal that instills more trust in your customers.
Proper use of SSL certificates will help protect your customers, help protect you, and help you to gain your customers trust and sell more. Plus, and very importantly, you’re keeping Google happy!