Google will give you a bump in search rankings. — Use HTTPS?

Search ranking change ought to be good news for domain name registrars.

Google disclosed this morning that it’s starting to give extra credit in search results to firms offering websites secured by SSL.

That means sites where you see httpS:// might show up higher in search results than those without added encryption.

Google explains the added ranking factor in a post on its blog:

…over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it’s only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content — while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, since we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.

This could be a boon to both domain name registrars and certificate sellers ought to the ranking boost be considered meaningful. SSL certificates sell for a lot more per year than domain names. Heck, they even cost more than many shared hosting packages. It’s an add-on domain name registrars will appreciate help selling.