Submission + - Google Lowers Search Ranking of Websites That Don't Use Encryption (itworld.com)
itwbennett writes: Google is taking Internet security into its own hands, punishing sites that don't use encryption by giving them lower search rankings. The use of https is now one of the signals, like whether a Web page has unique content, that Google uses to determine where a site will appear in search rankings, although it will be a 'lightweight' signal and applies to about 1 percent of search queries now, wrote Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, both Google webmaster trends analysts, in a blog post.