by samGoogle are making big changes to Chrome; like Firefox 14 and Mobile Safari before them, all searches made within Chrome will soon be done over SSL.
What?
Secure Sockets Layer searches provide increased communication security online, specifically designed to allow client-server applications to communicate across a network in a way so as to reduce the threat of eavesdropping or tampering. Soon, if you choose to make a search within Chrome’s omnibox, it will be done in this secure way via SSL by default.
When?
Chrome 25 will be the first version to feature these changes but is still currently a developer release; when it is produced and released as their new browser though, all internal searches will be subject to this change. The way we search will seem the same in practise, and the resulting search URLS will be almost identical – just boasting an extra character – ‘https://’ rather than ‘http://’.
How?
If the average user is unaware of any drastic changes, the online marketing world is sure to notice. The change means more and more searches will be hidden from marketers – that little extra ‘s’ on the URL means the referrer data drops off, data which is vital to marketers as it tells them what their customers are searching for on Google after landing on their site. Searches made for users signed into Google have been SSL by default since last year, a change which Google insisted affected less than 10{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} of all searches; but marketers will have to adapt now that a more widespread change is coming into effect.
Why?
The news isn’t particularly good; even Google’s own Google Analytics is facing the block. Although you can integrate the tool with their Webmaster Tools to generate SEO reports, marketers will only be privy to the top 1,000 queries (aggregated) for a particular site, and these results will only refer to the last 30 days. This is not as comprehensive or indeed useful as most marketers are used to (or would want) and Google have been accused of making the change in order to appear as though they are protecting their customers but simultaneously denying sites and companies the opportunity to build more effective SEO campaigns. Some even consider the announcement a ‘false privacy claim’ insisting the internet giants appear concerned about their user’s security… until they are able to make money selling user data to their advertisers.
What does the future hold?
The outcry has been resounding from all corners of the marketing world, but the SSL changes show no sign of slowing, let alone stopping. An increasing number of searches are being done by default over SSL and some believe that 100{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} of queries reported in Google Analytics will soon be SSL.
The SSL trend is, therefore, undeniably on the increase and the grim truth is that soon organic search results may well be hidden entirely from digital marketers; the very results which are essential to form effective SEO and online marketing campaigns.