When Site:Domain Search Run on Google, SSL Error Appears on One URL, Will this Harm Ranking

[Kingalan1]

Greetings MOZ Community:

When a site:domain search is run on Google, a very strange URL appears in the search results. The URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com:2082/

The page displays a "the site's security certificate is not trusted." This only appears for one URL out of 400.

Could this indicate a wider problem with the server's configuration? Is this something that needs to be corrected, and if so how? Our ranking has dropped a lot in the last few months.

Thanks,
Alan

[donford]

Hi Kingalan1,

A couple things I hope will help.
First the suffix at the end of the url :2082 is indicating a port, the typical configuration is when hitting port 2082 is to redirect to the site's cPanel. This URL should never be indexed and never displayed in any SERP. (Search Engine Results Page). I'm not sure how this url got submitted to Google or indexed, but you certainly don't want it there. Could be in an auto created xml site index, or if you used the host's site submit they could have done it. Something you want to look into.

The second thing looking at the site nyc-officespace-leader.com it does not appear to use a SSL or it is improperly configured. If you go to any of the sites URLs and change the HTTP to HTTPS you'll notice this error: (Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long) here is a helpful post on stackoverflow.com that deal exactly with this this error.

Hope this info helps,

Don

[Kingalan1]

Hi Don:

This is most helpful, thanks!!! I will have my developers remove this :2082 page as soon as possible.

My site does not use an SSL certificate that I know of. Should it be? No transactions are processed on the site.

Would it be an SEO plus to incorporate an SSL certificate?

Thanks, Alan

[donford]

Hi Kingalan,

Feel free to mark the response as good / thumbs up / answered.

To answer the other question. Should you have an SSL, last year I would have said no if you don't collect any user information. However, today my answer would be a little more murky. Google recently announced they are in fact factoring HTTPS in their algorithm as a ranking factor. To have HTTPS you would then need a SSL, to get an SSL you then need a dedicated IP address (you may already have one). If you are not hosting your own website you then have to pay for SSL and possibly the dedicated IP in addition to the normal hosting cost.

The benefit right now, probably wouldn't be immediate as this is a relatively new announcement. However, if you think about why Google would incorporate it into a ranking factor you really understand that it makes since. To get an SSL you have to verify your domain with a trusted 3rd party, and have a dedicated IP, these 3rd parties are competing for your money so they often offer fraud insurance which looks good to users (which is what Google cares about). Now that last part of the statement can be expanded on to a full blown article, as Google makes nothing from users and everything from businesses. Suffice to say, in the end Google wants to serve the best user experience results, and if a website goes through the process of getting an SSL all other things being equal that website should rank higher.

Hope that all makes sense and is helpful.

Don