Like everyone, Google takes security seriously. In fact, Google probably takes security far more seriously than most others, due to the access to information Google has on its users and their data. As a means of reassuring those who do use Google’s various services and in particular Drive, earlier today, Google sent out a post on Drive’s blog detailing that they were expanding the monetary investments they make in Drive security in 2016. However, that was not the only security-focused announcement the Search giant announced today.
As search services are Google’s main money maker you would expect that this is also one of the aspects of their ecosystem that they take seriously when it comes to security. Of course, regarless of which browser you use, it is always more secure to be directed to HTTPS pages, compared to standard HTTP pages. This is why most businesses which makes use of a payment method (or any customer data collection) will always redirects you to a HTTPS page when processing any of your information. Likewise, this is also why Google recently started boosting the ranks of HTTPS URLs in Google’s search results. Following on from that boosting of HTTPS pages, Google has today announced that they are now beginning to prioritize HTTPS pages over HTTP pages. Therefore, when using search, Google notes that if two pages are indexed and both seem to contain the same content and are from the same domain, search results will automatically prioritize the HTTPS page in their results. This even includes HTTPS pages that are not linked to from another page.
That said, although the announcement states that a preference of sorts will be provided to identical pages which make use of a HTTPS URL, that is not to say that all HTTPS URLs will be always prioritized. Google does make it clear that for a HTTPS page to rank before a HTTP page, it does need to be one which is free from insecurities, as Google is not intended to redirect users to pages which are displayed as safe, but still contain vulnerabilities. Those interested can read the full Online Security blog post from Google by heading through the source link below.