SSL and SEO

[drigotti]

Say my website is example.com. I send all my visitors to example.com. However, if you visit [example.com...] you'll see an SSL warning... "This is probably not the site you are looking for!" page. Will this affect SEO of example.com?

[edited by: phranque at 12:27 am (utc) on Jun 3, 2014]
[edit reason] exemplified domain [/edit]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, drigotti!


that's a browser message.
it's not an error per se - it's a warning.

"This is probably not the site you are looking for!" - Chrome Help:
http://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95309 [support.google.com]

Google Chrome may show this warning if phishing and malware protection is enabled. It indicates that the URL listed in the website's certificate doesn't match the actual URL of the site.

from an SEO perspective, you'll have 2 things to worry about:
- one is the affect of potential visitors bailing on your site when they see this or a similar message from the browser during the SSL handshake.
- the main concern is whether or not you are properly redirecting https: requests to the canonical http: url.

[drigotti]

Thanks! Yup, definitely know it's a warning, I guess to rephrase the question: Does Google include this warning in ranking considerations? Redirecting https:// to http:// is not an option unfortunately, so looking for expert opinion on if this will hurt Google SEO.

[phranque]

Redirecting https:// to http:// is not an option unfortunately

please elaborate.

if this will hurt Google SEO

if you want to discuss Google SEO specifically, you should post a thread in the Google SEO News and Discussion [webmasterworld.com] forum.
in general, if you have links to the https: url and you aren't redirecting to the canonical url, then you will lose that link equity, if any.