NEW YORK: Secure website connections will now get a priority in Google search results.
In a blog post, the search engine has explained that websites that use secure connections (like https over http) will get a boost in rank.
"For now it is only a very lightweight signal" affecting fewer than 1 percent of global queries and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content "while we give webmasters time to switch to https", Google said.
But over time, "we may decide to strengthen it because we would like to encourage all website owners to switch from http to https to keep everyone safe on the web", it posted.
Google uses indicators to decide ranking of websites.
Being useful and informative, credible, engaging, high quality and finally more useful than other sites are some of the signals Google uses to rank pages.
Gmail was designed secure by default and google search went the https way in 2010.
"We hope to see more websites using https in the future. Let's all make the web more secure!" the Google post added.