SSL certificates are used by over 88% of websites

SSL certificates are used by more than 88% of the world's top websites. However, despite the ubiquity of SSL certificates, many webmasters don't fully understand them.

What is SSL?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard security protocol for establishing encrypted links between a web server and a browser in online communication. It allows sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and passwords to be transmitted securely over the internet.

Invented by Netscape in 1995, SSL uses asymmetric cryptography to transmit data using public and private keys. The public key is known only to the server while the private key remains secret on it. When you visit a website that has an SSL certificate installed on its server, your browser will check if there's an active encrypted connection with the site's server before continuing to load additional information from it. If there's no active encrypted connection or if something looks suspicious about this particular website's certificate then your browser would refuse to continue loading any additional content beyond what it has already received from this site which could mean that all of your important personal information may never reach its destination safely due to lack of proper encryption protocols!

SSL provides privacy, critical security, and data integrity for both your websites and your users' personal information.

When you visit a website during an SSL connection, your browser establishes a secure connection with the server that hosts that site. This ensures that all communications between you and the host are encrypted (scrambled) so no one else can see them—not even ISPs or hackers who might be trying to intercept them in transit. Even if someone were able to intercept an unencrypted transaction on its way from you to a merchant's server, they would not be able to read it because of the encryption technology used in SSL connections.

Google's announcement

Google publicly announced that it would give ranking boosts to websites that have implemented HTTPS encryption. The original announcement was made in 2014, and at the time, Google said it would take months for these rankings to take effect. However, over time the impact of this change grew significantly and now impacts 88% of websites (and climbing).

Since then we've seen other search engines follow suit with similar announcements:

• Bing announced they'd start using HTTPS as a signal within their own search engine as well as influencing other factors like clickthrough rates from SERPs
• Yahoo has also implemented this change in their search engine

The rate of adoption of HTTPS websites has been increasing steadily over the past few years.

Over the past few years, the rate of adoption for HTTPS websites has been increasing steadily. In fact, its uptake is growing faster than the growth of the internet and web traffic itself. It’s also growing faster than new websites being created.

According to a report by the Let’s Encrypt project, the number of HTTPS websites grew by 70% between January and October 2018 alone.

In June 2018, the percentage of websites under HTTPS reached 88.4%. This was an increase from 85.3% in January 2017 and 83.3% in January 2016. The growth has been consistent over time: 81% in July 2014; 78% by September 2015; 77% by March 2016; then a jump to 81% by December 2016, and finally to 85%, where it stayed until June 2018.

According to W3Techs, 69% of the top 10 million websites use SSL certificates for encrypting traffic. This is a good thing—it’s a recent increase from the previous year, and it represents the first time that number has crossed into double digits.

In addition to the top 100,000 websites on Alexa, we analyzed a large sample of the remaining sites. We found that 87% of them use HTTPS, while only 13% are not HTTPS-enabled.

Here’s what this means: if you have an eCommerce website or take payments on your site (even if you aren’t selling products or services), then it makes sense to invest in an SSL certificate.

HTTPS for everyone!

In newer browsers, you can also see in the address bar when a site is using HTTPS and how secure it is. The color of the address bar will indicate either that it's secure or insecure.

The green padlock means that your connection is safe and secure. If the website has an invalid certificate or one that isn't trusted by your browser, then it will show up as gray (this still indicates an insecure connection). Finally, if there's no padlock at all—and especially if it's red—that means something has gone terribly wrong with your connection!

Benefits of SSL

You can't ignore the fact that the future of the web is HTTPS. If you're looking for a way to improve user trust in your website and protect their data, then SSL certificates are what you need.

Here's why:

• HTTPS enables users to browse securely over an encrypted connection.
• HTTPS makes it harder for hackers to access your site or sensitive information.
• HTTPS is faster than HTTP.
• Using an SSL certificate ensures that a user's personal information remains private while they engage with your site. In addition, websites using SSL are perceived as more trustworthy than those without one because they can prove that their pages have been secured against cyber attacks by showing visitors a padlock icon in their address bar.

Adoption of HTTPS

You may have noticed that many websites now use a lock icon in their browser address bar. This is because of HTTPS, which stands for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure." HTTPS is an encrypted version of HTTP, the protocol used to transfer data between your web browser and the website you are visiting.

For example, when you enter "https://" into your browser's address bar (rather than just typing "http://"), it means that a secure connection has been established between your computer and the server hosting the website. Anyone snooping on this communication will find it much harder to decipher what's being sent back and forth between them, which makes it unreadable by prying eyes like governments or hackers looking for sensitive information like credit card numbers.

Conclusion

As you can see, the rate of adoption of HTTPS websites has been increasing steadily over the past few years. Google publicly announced that it would give ranking boosts to websites that have implemented HTTPS encryption. It’s becoming harder to ignore the benefits associated with using SSL certificates as they play a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth browsing experience while keeping data safe.