Google have been making rumblings for some time about favouring websites that run over secure https connections (instead of the default http). This is the kind of setup previously reserved for banking and e-commerce websites where you have the little padlock icon near the address bar.
It’s been rumoured that this has been a minor ranking signal as well, possibly having a small effect on your search rankings. Couple that with the warnings in Chrome and the message from Google is getting clearer.
Google prefers website running over https.
We received this email recently:
It’s time to move.
Starting today, all new websites we set up will run over https by default.
And if your current website address doesn’t start with https, it’s time to move it over. (We can look after that too of course – contact us for details.)