Google Rolls Out Encrypted Web Search Option

KirinMercury writes "Google began offering an encrypted option for Web searchers on Friday and said it planned to roll it out for all of its services eventually. People who want to use the more secure search option can type 'https://www.google.com' into their browser, scrambling the connection so the words and phrases they search on, and the results that Google displays, will be protected from interception." Note that you need the 'www' for it to work. Dropping it redirects you to a non-ssl page. You might have read this on Saturday, but if you missed it, it's still worth knowing.

Comments

This will have interesting results for webmasters

[JoshuaZ]

This will have an interesting impact on webmasters. If someone clicks through from a secure Google search to your webpage, the referral data is not given. That means that the person who runs the website will not only not see what the search term was they won't even see that it came from a Google search. I'm not sure how that will impact people. But if enough people use secure search, it may cause people to have to do a lot of guesswork about how much traffic they are getting from Google searches.