Google Index HTTPs vs HTTP

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Hi Everyone, this is my first post here and I thought I'd open with something that's been playing on my mind for a while in the hopes that some of you with experience can help out.

As the title suggests this is a question which revolves around the indexing and ranking of HTTPs but specifically, do HTTPs indexed pages rank higher in SERPs than HTTP?

My automatic response would be no and I would go on to say, assuming all other ranking factors were identical there's no reason this should be the case but recently I had a site indexed on Google using HTTPs after being listed as HTTP for over a year and the site leaped up the SERPs.

This got me thinking. Could serving my site over a secure connection have led Google to interpret my website as more reputable/trust worthy/less likely to be spam and applied a higher level of trust?

Surely this makes sense right? But I can find nothing to validate this anywhere online.

Since this change settled over a couple of months I have decided to revert back to HTTP in the index, this will give me clear experience of whether it makes a difference or not but I was more curious if anyone else had any experience of this?
#search engine optimization #google #http #https #index
  • Hi, very interesting question to which I do not know the answer. Gut instinct says it should not make a difference, but there may be something within the trust argument. I would certainly be interested in the outcome of your experimentation. Jim
    • [1] reply
  • Thanks fmnely1, I'm fully aware that messing with Google Search could land my website in trouble but it's a chance I'm willing to take

    Just a quick update to say, so far some of my pages have been re-indexed without the 'https' and there's (currently) no noticeable change in SERP ranking. I did always understand this was the case but was surprised my site improved so much when indexed as https.

    I will continue to keep an eye on the SERPs and update accordingly.
    • [1] reply
    • Well, it's been quiet a while now and I've got to be honest, I've found no real stats to indicate the above is true.

      My suspicion is that backlinks were still popping up for the site after the move from http to https creating the illusion that https ranked higher but now after a few months back with http there's not really been much difference in ranking.
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    Google Index HTTPs vs HTTP

    Hi Everyone, this is my first post here and I thought I'd open with something that's been playing on my mind for a while in the hopes that some of you with experience can help out. As the title suggests this is a question which revolves around the indexing and ranking of HTTPs but specifically, do HTTPs indexed pages rank higher in SERPs than HTTP?