Do https sites rank as well as http sites?

[JustinClark]

2 Questions:

Question 1 - We currently have our entire site running on https (the http pages 301-redirect to the https versions).  Assuming that the https pages load as quickly as the http versions, is it a problem that the entire site is https?

The only official answer I've been able to find is this 2011 video where Matt Cutts basically says "I don't know" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeFo4ytOk8M

Question 2 - Is there any problem with having half our site running on https only (with the http pages redirected), and the other half (our blog) running on http only (with all https blog pages redirected to the http versions)?

Thanks in advance for any input!

Justin

[TGOOSE]

Hi,

There won't be any problem with your site if you use Https, and for blog Http. These two protocols servs as a request and response from the servers. If you use ""http"" then the communicating data will not be secured, if you use https (http includes secure socket layer) you data will be safe, main thing it will not effect to SEO part. for more information you can read http://theprofessionalspoint.blogspot.in/2012/04/http-vs-https-similarities-and.html

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Justin,

Cutts has said more recently that there should not be any problem going the all https route, although he notes to try it out first on a 'lower traffic domain' if possible(!). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4801641 Quite a few popular sites are heading this way (twitter, fb, paypal for example)

Assuming that is correct and you are not seeing any ranking/indexing issues with the site currently in https, there should not be an obvious reason to worry.

For your second question, again there should be no issue with running the blog on a non https url, but you would do well to avoid having links to the https version of the blog that are then 301 redirected to the http version. So making sure all your internal links to the blog are already http would be a good idea and ideally all links from the blog back to the site would already be https.

Beyond the page loading times, https urls can often have gotcha moments where certain elements of the page (js or css links, image urls etc) can be non https and produce warnings in some browsers which is bad for user experience. Sometimes the pages these errors occur on can be pretty deeply hidden so good to be methodical. Also need to keep in mind that your robots.txt and sitemap should also be served on the https protocol and make sure that your sitemap is not automatically generating https urls for all the site (blog included) which can potentially create unneeded confusion.

Hope that helps!

[JustinClark]

Very helpful info, thanks!