Google will index https pages by default

Google will index sites that have an https version as standard. This means that Google’s search algorithms are adjusted in such a way that more people search for https pages. More than a year ago, Google already started placing https sites higher in the search results.

The search engine will first try to see if there is also a variant of a web page that uses http over tls or https. The machine will do this even if there is no direct link between the two, the webmaster blog says. If two URLs from the same domain have the same content, but are sent via different protocols, then the choice will be made to index the page as https.

However, not every secured page will be indexed by default. Pages must meet a number of conditions for this. For example, there must be no insecure dependencies in the page, the page must not be blocked in the robots.txt, the page must not forward users via an insecure connection, the rel=”canonical” tag must not link to an http page , there must be no noindex tag, there must be no links on the same host to an http page and the server must of course have a valid tls certificate.

In this way, Google hopes to make internet users safer and less exposed to possible attacks via content injection or man-in-the-middle attacks. The company also recommends using the hsts header on servers so that users are redirected to an https connection by default.