Encryption. The S in HTTPS stands for secure, it also means that the connection to the website is encrypted. It ensures that your vacation rental website's visitors are safe transacting on your website, and lets them know they are really dealing with you and not an imposter.

Google has made a few announcements this year in regards to how the Chrome browser will manage HTTP websites & URL’s in the near future. In short, Goggle plans to eventually “shame” all websites that do not use HTTPS encryption. Keep calm and take a deep breath… Google doesn’t plan to shame all unencrypted websites at once, you still have time.

Starting in January of 2017 Google’s Chrome Browser will treat pages with password or credit card form fields like the following:

In following releases of the Google Chrome browser you can expect to see Google extend their warnings.

If you are interested to see how it works before January, you can turn it on now. Type “chrome://flags” in your Chrome browser and then navigate to “mark non-secure as” select “mark non-secure origins as non-secure.”

Encryption is good. It makes the internet a safer place and it is vital to make your website visitors feel secure. Additionally, an HTTPS website can give you a boost in search engine rankings.  

Migrating website to HTTPS is becoming easier and cheaper than ever before. If you’re a techie you probably already know what needs to be done. If not the best place to start, would be to contact your website hosting company.

Sources:

http://searchengineland.com/google-starts-giving-ranking-boost-secure-httpsssl-sites-199446 

https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-secure-web.html