Verisign Trust Seal and Domain Metrics (Has noting to do with SSL)

[Jinx14678]

Hi,

Does anyone have any evidence or case studies that Verisign Trust seal actually raises trust metrics?

I know there are the obvious benefits such as better CTR and Conversion (which could in turn raise trust metrics). But i am looking for actual sighted examples of Verisign increasing trust signals to search engines discrediting the correlation between search metrics improving.

I modified this as i think people are getting confused between SSL products and the specific Versign product i am talking about Verisign Trust Seal seen here. https://www.verisign.com/trust-seal/index.html?tid=gnps

This has nothing to do with security for transactions it is more geared towards all around safer user experience including Malware scans and enhanced "stand out" in SERPS. It is not just a Domain validation but an organizational or Branding authentication check"

With that being said, the question still stands Does anyone have any case studies or direct examples of trust being elevated in metrics for the specific product mentioned above.

Thanks.

[Highland]

If your average user even knows who Verisign is I'd be amazed. I have an EV SSL certificate through Godaddy (who is more well known, but for other reasons) and I've not seen any indication that anyone even knows the difference. I've even found many users don't even know what the green bar in the browser means (and Safari doesn't help by making just the protocol text green).

As far as Google goes, I can't say Google does anything significant with SSL, let alone care who your SSL is with.

[Jinx14678]

Hi,

I am not talking about SSL, I am talking about the Trust Seal which DOES improve CTR as the seal is shown in search engines.

Of course SSL would not affect as this is only a certificate, but the Verisign Trust seal is an identity confirmation and a "thumbs up" for security aspects.

[oznappies]

It can help your click through conversion rate if it is on the checkout page near the 'pay' button as it can build user confidence. I agree that a lot of users do not know all the safety measures developers put into a site, but if you give them a warm and fuzzy feeling when they are about to purchase and a place to check your security or privacy policy, then they are more likely to complete the sale.

I would doubt it adds rank but with Google's emphasis on usability it may be a factor on legitimising your site, especially if you have an EV SSL as the process is more rigerous to be validated.

[RyanKent]

Shane, Verisign offers a toll-free contact number. If I was in your situation I would pick up the phone and give them a call. If any data exists on this topic, they will surely have it.

They may have to research it a bit, but if they do not know, then I would suggest the data does not exist.

[Jinx14678]

.....

Hmmmm

I guess the wording of case study (meaning actual research done by a third party to investigate something or research) was missed.

Of course a company will tell me what i want to hear....

I was asking for specific case studies (that apparently do not exist because no one can seem to grasp the question) not a recommendation from the company itself.

Is SEOMOZ the best SEO tool suite? (i think so) but i would not recommend calling SEOMOZ to get that info..... seems kind of counter intuitive, granted companies "spin" data to look the best always in their favor...

[RyanKent]

Actually Shane I carefully read your Question.

"Does anyone have any evidence or case studies...."

To clarify my response, I am not aware of any case studies being performed. If you are looking for "evidence", then the vendor may have that information. You can then determine for yourself the value of that evidence.

One more point. Vendors are usually aware of ALL the case studies performed on their product, even if they didn't perform the case study themselves. Using your SEOmoz example, if someone wrote an article on "What is the best SEO tool suite", then SEOmoz would probably be aware of it and COULD refer you to the article.

Of course, if that article wasn't objective or favorable, they may not. It would depend on the article and the ethics of the company involved.

[Jinx14678]

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. From a marketing perspective and knowing what i know about marketing and sales closing tactics I tend to feel that a company no matter where they point you will never be the counter argument, always the pro argument.

This is why your suggestion to me seems counter intuitive as i had obviously already picked out a specific product, and done research on it.

Also not to mention that if they had readily available information that proved they made domain (or brand) trust metrics with search engines go up (especially knowing what we now know about Panda), why would they not have that front in center as SEO's would be lining up at the door for that opportunity, in my opinion.

[Highland]

I know what the trust seal is (and most often it's accompanied by an SSL certificate signed by Verisign). But if you took a poll of people and asked them who Verisign is, I bet the majority wouldn't have a clue. Thus I don't pay for their seal (which I could have gotten with an SSL certificate). This is the only real difference in their costs.

Remember, the trust seal only shows up if you're running AVG antivirus in your browser

[oznappies]

Shane, it tends to be the sites that manipulate the rankings (black hat) know all those tricks and if all it took was a seal from an SSL company, they would have a different one on each page. It would be surprising that the seal actually gives you page rank, it most likely does the opposite since an outbound link only passes juice to the destination and all those seals link directly to the ssl provider.

As Ryan points out contacting Verisign directly will give you some insight, they are a company built on reputation and would not say it adds Google rank when it does not. You have to consider what their product is 'trust' and if they give you false information that hurts their marketting when you discover that is not the case. They would tell you what I said in my first reply, that their seal brings customer conversions, which is ultimately what you are after.

Generally ecommerce sites exclude their ssl pages via robots.txt or nofollows so the question does not get raised. If the content on those pages is secure but not authenticated then the value is limited as it is public and open to exploit. As a developer, I have attended many seminars on this topic alone.

The rank gain you get is secondary (from more tweets, blog links etc because people trust your site and like it) rather than a direct corelation.

Read the paper (relevant section below) from the link:

If I use SSL on my pages, will we be PageRank'd higher then non-ssl pages? So far, there is NO conclusive proof that a SSL site will get higher Google/MSN/Yahoo search rank listing compared to the same site which is unencrypted. In fact there seems to be no positive or negative result if you have your pages encrypted or not. This is because the quality of the data on the site is not validated by SSL, only that the certificate is independently verified. The most important factor in Google's PageRank for example is the amount of high quality sites linking back to your site. The idea being that if a site like Digg or CNN link to your site then your page rank will increase because their page rank is high. This is completely independent of whether your page is encrypted or not.