HTTPS impact on SEO ranking
 

I have changed my website to https recently and noticed a consistent increase in traffic (almost tripled). The traffic is organic/search from Google so I assume they have set this change as a relevant ranking condition. Did you guys notice the same ?

relevant question, how much SE traffic did you have before it tripled?

if you went from a few hundred uniques to a thousand uniques per day it just sounds like google finally picking up your site a little. I see this all the time on new sites (or after optimizing an old one), it happens abruptly. It's like google decides one day "hey you don't suck" and starts turning on the faucet.

if you actually tripled an appreciable amount of traffic then perhaps HTTPS did contribute.

right now though, I don't see evidence to make me believe that google is strongly preferring HTTPS. The top tubes are using https, but, causality: are they the top tubes because of https? Or do they use https because they're the top tubes?

the aggregator networks (adultwebmasternet, etc) are not using https and continue to rank well.

What other changes did you make at the same time? Better responsive design or newer updated content?

Your first statement applies to my case, it's a new website (also an aggregator) and after a couple of weeks with 100-150 daily uniques, traffic tripled. I am not relying solely on Google, I receive traffic from other search engines too. One thing I noticed before adding https, is that other search engines were pointing to the https version of my website even though I had no SSL certificates installed. So basically after installing it, all that blocked traffic got released.

No relevant changes Barry, videos are automatically added from different adult providers on a daily basis. I change post frequency so it doesn't seem too automatic.

Thank you for your thoughts!

for me it happened just the opposite, slow positive incline in google traffic went to decline when i changed to https on one site...

Changing to and creating a new domain in TLS (https) have different SEO affects.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/...-guide/195103/
This is a pretty good list ...

TLS/SSL is only needed for user data entry really. Who is going to packet sniff your web surfing realistically? Any webserver .pem files that are from a trusted source -- the NSA, or other countries' spy agencies will be able to obtain decryption one way or another if they want to. HTTPS security, if you are a government target is a joke.

Gmail is HTTPS and gets hacked all the time by social engineering and phishing.

I think this HTTPS is really a Google scam to eliminate a lot of the web they have to index -- thus lowering their expenses. Either that or: Googlers all wear tin foil hats in the Googleplex :2 cents:

I have a script to scrape Google SERPs. I am going to analyze the HTTPS boost but it will only be subjective, as Google has bullied the webmaster community in converting their sites to HTTPS.

This... :2 cents:

Is true, https work better!

well 57% seem to get better serps but there are a few ways to look at this

too long

cont
position,domain^

peer pressure and flow...

If a lot of domains have changed to https there really is no effect. You would have to study their rank before they changed. But whatever google says do -- we are all google slaves ...

yeah dude, a new site tripling like that from 100-150 uniques has nothing to do with https. Google's just deciding your site doesn't totally suck. Congrats!

Would love to take a look at your site if you're willing to share!

Google wants people to move to HTTPS and they give it a VERY SLIGHT boost (their own words) but 3x is something else. There is no way they are giving 3x weight just for HTTPS.

You're right, I don't think https is of much relevance yet. I will analyse ranking over the course of a month or two to understand something. I feel like I rushed into a conclusion after a few days of traffic. For example these last 2 days it started to decrease, so I assume other factors were involved.

Seems to me that I was seeing maybe 40% https as compared to the 60% (or so) I see now https. I think that migration in the main factor and the peer-pressure Google has created in the migration to https.

Here is an article from Feb 2016 that seems to support the 40% https enabled last year claim. https://ahrefs.com/blog/ssl/

I am developing an api/app using WebRTC and TLS (HTTPS) is mandatory to use to support the underlying code. So some this is immaterial/moot to me --however getting it right (with a new domain) is important.

i havent seen a change in PR on any sites (free, paysite, mainstream), but i've seen a 3x increase in conversion rates on nearly every paysite we upgrade to https.

more than a few sites on the network that were doing 1-2 sales a day got a 3x boost almost immediately. nothing else changed but https. it probably doesn't matter much on free sites, but it makes a big difference on paysites.

#porncms

I changed a page to HTTPS a couple of months ago. Traffic and search rankings seem to be slightly higher than before, but that could be due to a lot of different things. One big positive though is that the page loads much faster now!

I switched back to http. My website is a tube aggregator and since very few providers support https, the videos wouldn't load.

plsureking I guess people feel safer with that green lock, when they purchase from your pay sites :)

yea chrome adds a huge security alert to every form that isn't secure. join page, contact page, login page. its forced compliance for paysites.

true about aggregators. there's many adult services that haven't switched. Vette Nation can't figure out https. I had to set up a workaround for the https sites that want to embed the VN pages (turn https off just for those pages).

#porncms

My host is $35/Domain/year.

I might move an under-performing Domain(s) as a "sub Domain"!