Does SSL Certification matter for organic Google ranking and SEO ? (2016)

In one related study they tracked rankings across 50,000 keyword searches and 218,000 domains.

They monitored those rankings over time, and observed which URLs in the SERPs changed from HTTP to HTTPS.

Of the 218,000 domains being tracked, just 630 (0.3%) of them made the switch to HTTPS.

And they actually lost ranking.

Later they recovered (slowly) to pretty much where they started.

Hardly a reason to jump on the HTTPS bandwagon.

It appears that HTTPS (despite Google wanting to make it standard everywhere on the web) has no significant ranking benefit for now and may actually harm your rankings in the short term.

My advice: Stay using HTTP unless you really need to change.

There is a recent post on the subject from a highly respected member of our world:


https://www.quicksprout.com/2016/03/...d-or-shouldnt/

I do not think I am allowed to give the links but a few recent posts from marketing gurus such as Neil Patel seem to suggest that it would be better for SEO (moderately better) to have a secure connection with an SSL certificate, especially for commercial sites.

However for a website that only has affiliate links, a website that sells nothing, I wonder whether it is appropriate to have an SSL certificate? https better than http? I think the answer is NO.

1) First, because the favorable impact on the search results (even for financial sites) do not seem that important.

2) Because I think Google is smart enough to make the difference between a commercial website (a site where you have to give your credit card number) and an information site with affiliate links.

3) Because SSL certificates slow down a website: the secure connection is a bit slower than the non-secure one because the data transfer has to be encrypted on both ends.

And Google takes into account the loading speed of a page in its algorithm.

Thus the potential benefit (in terms of SEO) an SSL certificate could be destroyed by the loss of speed.

I'm curious to hear your opinion on this issue. Thanks.