* * * * *
                                        
   We wouldn't want anything to happen to the page rank on your nice website,
                                 now would we?
                                        
> For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking
> into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in
> our search ranking algorithms. We've seen positive results, so we're
> starting to use HTTPS (HyperText Transport Protocol Secure) as a ranking
> signal. For now it's only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than
> 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as
> high-quality content [1] — while we give webmasters time to switch to
> HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to
> encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP (HyperText Transport
> Protocol) to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.
> 

Via Rob Landley's Blog Thing for 2015 [2], “Official Google Webmaster Central
Blog: HTTPS as a ranking signal [3]”

And that was nine months ago. Is your website served over HTTPS?

This just appears to be yet more proof that Google is calling the shots on
the web now [4].

Oh, by the way, your web server is HTTP/2 compliant [5], right? Wouldn't want
anything bad to happen to your page rank [6], now would you?

[1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6001093?utm_source=wmx_b
[2] http://landley.net/notes.html#06-05-2015
[3] http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.jp/2014/08/https-as-ranking-
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2015/05/05.1
[5] http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199536-prominent-developer-
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.