The HTTP Doomsday Clock is ticking and estate agents who haven’t upgraded to full HTTPS SSL Security are about to feel the full pain of Google’s HTTP Armageddon.

If your website doesn’t comply with today’s online security requirements, brace yourself for online oblivion. 

You’ve no doubt already seen the “Not Secure” message in browsers, but Google will be starting its next offensive against insecure HTTP websites over the summer. This will take the form of the addition of a pop-up, asking users “are you really sure you want to enter”. This will need to be accepted, in order to enter a site.

Will your website visitors, and more importantly potential customers, trust you enough to do this? Does it give them the right impression of your business?

The answer to both questions is most likely to be NO.

Non-HTTPS SSL Secures sites will also find it increasingly hard to get listed in search engine results, as Google systematically weeds out sites that don’t live up to what really should be standard practice by now.

This may all seem very harsh and unfair on estate agents and other businesses, but in the interests of online safety and security, as well as practical issues such a page speed and user experience, we have to agree, it’s about time more businesses took responsibility for making the internet a better place to work, shop and play.

The technology is here and has been for a long time so businesses and website builders who have failed to update their sites are about to be very publically punished by Google.

With so many things like GDPR, tenant fee bans and EPC changes grabbing headlines, perhaps this lurking spectre has either slipped under the radar or been discarded as inconsequential. However. we can’t help feeling that website builders should accept a great deal of responsibility for not doing enough to protect their customers.

We’ve even heard of website builders charging substantially MORE to include HTTPS SSL Certification in NEW builds, even though it should be standard practice nowadays.

As their online authority disappears, along with their website users’ trust, estate agents may soon realise that their website should have been one of their top priorities. 

We upgraded ALL of our customers’ websites (including old sites) to HTTPS and provided SSL Certificates for FREE a long time ago, before many of our customers were even aware of how important it was about to become and completely seamlessly, without them even noticing!

Apart from the obvious penalties incurred by Google’s naming and shaming of insecure websites and ranking issues, why are insecure websites so risky?

Data breaches are hot news and the public are now waking up to the realities of online security. Property Fraud is also on the increase and registering details on a site that isn’t using secure SSL encryption is one of the quickest and easiest ways for fraudsters to hack into your email and LIFE! Phishing and spam is another favourite for website hackers to engage in, so it is in all of our interests to do everything possible to make it harder for them to do so.

It’s worth remembering that when you are visiting an insecure site, you are opening a direct pathway between your device and the website that could easily be intercepted.

If your website is still living in the dark HTTP days, maybe it’s time you did something about protecting both your business and your site’s users?

Get in touch with us for a confidential chat about beating the HTTP Doomsday Clock, before it strikes 12!