Google Makes the Move to HTTPS so Much Sweeter!

Google is doing everything they can to make shifting your sites to HTTPS a no brainer. This month they've made 2 big announcements in regards to how they treat HTTPS sites that will make you either excited you already made the jump OR ready to make it a priority this year.

1. Indexing HTTPS pages by default
Google announced on the Webmaster Central blog that they will be indexing HTTPS pages by default.

We're adjusting our indexing system to look for more HTTPS pages. Specifically, we'll start crawling HTTPS equivalents of HTTP pages, even when the former are not linked to from any page. When two URLs from the same domain appear to have the same content but are served over different protocol schemes, we'll typically choose to index the HTTPS URL...as long as the HTTPS URL looks safe across the board."

2. The Redirect to HTTPS will no longer hurt your rankings
Google also updated things so that a Move to HTTPS will NOT hurt your rankings AND that all your inbound links pointing to the HTTP version of your site will be automatically redirected to the HTTPS version. From John Mueller in a Google+ thread:

If we have two URLs (eg, http/https) that we know are duplicates, and we pick one over the other, then we'll generally fold the signals together into that URL. It's like www/non-www; you don't "lose" the links that point at the alternate version, even if you don't set up redirects.

This is means that worrying so much about getting all of the redirects 100% correct isn't a big deal. Google 'says' they will consolidate those signals for you, at their end. Of course, you'd still want to be sure you do the 301 redirects as a best practice. But in the scheme of things, Google will help you out considerably on this issue at their end. And if all of this good news didn't get you excited about making the move to HTTPS, here are some parting words on the subject from Google's spokesperson John Mueller: