Does HTTPS Only make a impact on SEO?

[Host1]

Hi.

I run a site that's SSL only. (Using a 301 redirect to redirect traffic from http:// to https://).

This might be a stupid question but i can't seem to find any conclusive answers to the question by searching. Does this negatively affect the search engine ranking of the site?

Regards,
Eivind

[joseph.chambers]

Well, since google is obsessed with speed and it's likely that the "handshake" -- I won't get that deep.

https:// and http:// are two different links. We all know that. .TLDs don't matter.. HTTPS:// doesn't matter. It's all the same. However maybe you can run a test: www.google.com/websiteoptimizer and see if the user engagement is better.

How fast is the site? Add: _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);  to your google analytics ( right after your _trackPageview ) and see how everyone else is handing it.

The bottom answer is: No. It will not effect your SERPs however if your sites not fast then thats something you should think about. I just installed: http://code.google.com/p/modpagespeed/ on my server and that does help a bit.

[Host1]

Thank you Joseph.

The site is faster than 77% of the sites online according to google. Could probably be tuned to be a bit faster i guess.

I'm going to try to tune the server a bit to make it faster, might also try to disable https on most of the site (except the billing-system) for a while to see if it has any impact on the speed according to google.