Stepping Away from HTTP

According to studies over internet usage, many users don’t often think about a website’s security based on the icons provided to them. People are too often blinded or flooded by these icons, which seems to have numbed their effects. To take more precautionary measures in protecting internet users, Google has been introducing clearer, stricter markings for websites collecting valuable information.

Lead by Google’s latest announcements about their intentions on this, the move away from HTTP pages has been taking some major strides forward lately. This brings about new, valuable pieces of information that are important to both a web user and a website owner. Not only are the current implementations important, but as a business owner managing the online sphere for marketing, this information and the future plans of stepping forward these anti-HTTP efforts can mean critical changes for you to be aware of. The following list contains main points of information to keep in mind and to monitor in the upcoming months.

– The start of these shifts began in 2014, when Google announced having HTTPS servers were important enough that they became a website ranking factor.

– As of January of this year, Chrome has begun to mark HTTP pages that collect sensitive information such as passwords or credit card information as non-secure.

-A big portion of websites have already transferred to the HTTPS protocol, so its usage has been on the rise. Recently, Google reported that more than half of the sites visited in Chrome are served via HTTPS.

-Moreover, since February of this year, 12 more of the top 100 sites on Google’s rankings have changed their default protocols from HTTP to HTTPS.

-Google has future plans with more gradual steps to label HTTP sites more clearly, based on strict guidelines on what they’ll take into consideration for user safety. One step they’ve given away is labeling HTTP sites as non-secure, even in incognito mode– which is where many users feel the most privacy.

-It is Google’s goal to eventually label all HTTP sites as non-secure, which is how their increasingly strict guidelines on them are hoping to direct the industry.

-In support of this move, WordPress announced that it will begin to introduce features available only for websites with HTTPS available.

Overall, these steps can mean some powerful changes when it comes to shifting over to HTTPS nearly completely. Luckily, HTTPS is actually easier and more cost-effective than it has been in the past, offering what’s believed to be the best performance for websites and enabling more features that HTTP currently can’t support. If you have an HTTP site and have lingering questions or worries, or you’d like more information, give i3 a call today. We stay on top of big industry moves in order to best inform our clients and keep our business technologically evolving.