Google Search Advances And Expands Security Measures

Google has been slowly and steadily moving towards making its search more secure and it has finally come to a conclusion. For the past few years Google has been using SSL as the encyption standard for securing connections. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a cryptographic protocol that provides communication security over the Internet. SSL encrypts the segments of network connections above the Transport Layer, using asymmetric cryptography for privacy and a keyed message authentication code for message reliability.

The SSL encryption protocol is not a completely new aspect when it comes to Google. Google has been allowing for that option since last year, only that it was an 'option', not a mandate. Though that made it cumbersome for academic networks as it prevented from censoring and monitoring.



Though for a more personalized search which Google services, a tighter security handle is customary. For that reason, Google is upgrading its search experience for signed-in users by re-directing them to Google instead of Google. The extra 's' is responsible for encryption of search queries. So, when a user searches from Google and enters a website, information about each individual query will be held by Google, not disclosing to the website one goes to through Google. This measure, especially crucial when people are sharing Internet Connection over Wi-Fi hotspots or in an Internet Cafe.

Though, this obviously would affect the website's marketing clues which it pulls from the ad clicks. Taking in account the alternate perspective, Google lists the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to a site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. Similarly, Google also makes up for academic networks by authorizing a NoSSLSearch option. The network administrator can adjust the DNS configuration for Google to point to their NoSSLSearch end point.

Google aims to continue to add support for SSL  across their products and services including the Cloud service, GMail and Google+.

Source: Official Google Blog: Making search more secure