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Moz report: 50% of page one search results are HTTPS

Based on the trend of sites switching to HTTPS and what is ranking in Google, we may see 70% of the page one results going to HTTPS by the end of 2017.

Barry Schwartz on April 24, 2017 at 10:11 am

Pete Meyers from Moz reports that according to their keyword tracking tools, half of the page one search results in Google show HTTPS URLs. This is up from 30 percent of the results in July 2016. And based on this trend, 70 percent of the page one search results could be HTTPS by the end of the year.

Here is a chart from Moz showing the 50 percent mark, and then the estimated trend by the end of 2017:

Pretty amazing, since Google started this push back in 2014 with their HTTPS ranking boost reward. Google just recently said they have no plans on boosting the HTTPS ranking signal, even though they actually thought about doing so a few months ago.

Moz tracks 10,000-plus keywords in their toolset, so this is not a full study of all the queries that return HTTPS results. A similar tool by RankRanger also puts Google’s page one results at about 50 percent for HTTPS URLs.

Peter Meyers digs deeper into which popular websites have switched and which have not.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.