Offering LetsEncrypt SSL Certificates

Artashes said:
How about an opinion from Let's Encrypt?

That's right. This debate caught my attention as easyhostmedia's statements regarding this were too confident in nature, so I've reached out to Let's Encrypt directly. While they chose not to post here, Josh Aas, Executive Director, wrote me back. The question I raised is if renewing the certificate every 90-days would negatively impact the ranking because Google would consider this certificate to be a trial and treat such a site as not having a secure certificate.



I understand that it isn't a scientific response (the most accurate one would probably be a response from Google itself), but the fact that Google themselves use 90-day (or less) SSL caught my eye. In my view, it is highly unlikely they treat sites negatively if they renew certificates frequently. A yes/no ping on presence of certificate is all they are probably looking for.
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Goggle are their own CA (Google Internet Authority G2) which will be different to anyone purchasing a SSL which is 12 month licences. 60 day and 90 licences are trial licences. Even purchased licences change algorithm/mapping on each renewal. I was told by Comodo that constantly renewing trial licences will be bad in relation to google indexing. I also had a live chat with google who told me the new indexing system they are using will take badly to constant SSL certs less that 12 months.
 
easyhostmedia said:
I was told by Comodo that constantly renewing trial licences will be bad in relation to google indexing. I also had a live chat with google who told me the new indexing system they are using will take badly to constant SSL certs less that 12 months.
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I have contacted Comodo to verify their statement to you. I will update this thread when I hear back.

As for Google, since it was your chat, if you happen to have saved the transcript, it would be hugely beneficial to share it with our members (at least the part where they comment on their new indexing system in respect to SSL certificates that are less than 12 months.
 
Artashes said:
I have contacted Comodo to verify their statement to you. I will update this thread when I hear back.

As for Google, since it was your chat, if you happen to have saved the transcript, it would be hugely beneficial to share it with our members (at least the part where they comment on their new indexing system in respect to SSL certificates that are less than 12 months.
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not sure if google live chat allowed users to copy/email transcripts. i will look through my emails to see if i have any as it could have been sent to my gmail account
 
Personally I doubt that Google is going to rank you higher or lower due to how long your SSL certificate is valid. Google's primary drive is to provide users with what they're looking for.

Comodo would certainly say that to keep you from perpetually not paying them money for a paid license.

I know that if your site is listed in Google both with and without SSL (http:// and https://) that they will show preference to the SSL version of your site.
 
Hello everyone,

Since we're talking about SEO and SSL Certificates and the impact on ranking, it's probably a good discussion to post in. I work in SEO every day, so I do have a little experience in this field - but everyone has their own opinion, so take it for what you will.

There's a number of items in this thread that I'd like to weigh in on;

Google indexing HTTPS over HTTP sites
August 2014 - Google announced HTTPS as a ranking signal (affecting fewer than 1% of global queries) and carries less weight than other signals such as content. It had a low weight giving webmasters time to swap over to HTTPS.

December 2015 - Google announced they would crawl HTTPS equivalents of HTTP, even if the HTTPS had no previous links. If a website shows both HTTP and HTTPS, Google will typically choose to display the HTTPS version (provided there’s no errors, the sitemap is updated and the certificate is valid etc).

Type of Certificate and Expiration time of an SSL Certificate
From a ranking perspective, Google does not care if it’s a Trial SSL, Standard SSL or EV SSL. This really comes into play when you’re dealing with the end user. The EV SSL can have it’s own power from the eyes of Trust (the green bar as we have on https://www.bigredseo.com). There are extra hoops involved, but it’s really quite painless.

Here’s a link to John Mueller from Google stating that Google doesn’t care the type of SSL - now this video is from 2014, but there hasn’t been any newer information. Also, keep in mind that it makes no difference “yet” - this may change in the future - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKQULFm2BQA&feature=youtu.be&t=33m

Google currently only checks if there’s a valid SSL with no errors - so this gets rid of the concerns of a 90 day certificate etc. But really, who has time to renew a certificate every 90 days! Just buy the 1 year or 2 year and be done with it. This is your business after all, invest some money!

Advantage of HTTPS does play out in the rankings, however the real power of HTTPS is in the Google Analytics. If your site is showing HTTP then referral data traffic would be lumped under the “direct” traffic flag. If you’re using HTTPS, then it will show the actual domain name the traffic came from. This is a gold mine of information.


TL;DR
There’s a ranking boost (how much, nobody knows, but with every part of SEO, any improvement is better than the other guy, so take the time and implement it)
You will see a dip in traffic, up to 20% in some cases, but if implemented correctly, you should only lose out on spam traffic anyway.
Type of certificate doesn’t matter
Expiration of certificate doesn’t matter.
Take some pride in your online business - buy a certificate!

Back when I ran a web hosting company, I spent nearly $1000/month just on OUR website servers. This was to ensure that our clients has a way to reach us at all times. A separate server for our website display, a different one for Live Help, a different one for Billing, a separate standby server for failovers, hourly backup that went to another isolated server, etc etc. Since we didn’t have a brick and mortar store rent, our online business was our rent.

If you haven’t taken the plunge to get to HTTPS, it’s worth doing. Google is big on security, and while the bonus right now may seem very small, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a focus (similar to how mobile is). Save the headache and make the move sooner rather than later!
 
Thanks for all of the information.

But really, who has time to renew a certificate every 90 days!
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At least when using Let's Encrypt this can easily be automated. If it wasn't automated I would also buy a 1 or 2 year certificate. But since I use DirectAdmin and Let's Encrypt is built in and automatically updates, why not use it.
 
LittleCreek said:
Thanks for all of the information.



At least when using Let's Encrypt this can easily be automated. If it wasn't automated I would also buy a 1 or 2 year certificate. But since I use DirectAdmin and Let's Encrypt is built in and automatically updates, why not use it.
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you also have to looks at what a savvy consumer conceives if they click on the padlock and see you have a free SSL.
Now do they trust a site that cant pay $9 for a paid SSL or risk using a site with a free SSL that may be a scam as scammers will try and do things without any cost to them.
 
easyhostmedia said:
Now do they trust a site that cant pay $9 for a paid SSL or risk using a site with a free SSL that may be a scam as scammers will try and do things without any cost to them.
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I think that's really the bigger issue.

Back when i first started in web hosting, and really into the early 2000's, if a web host only accepted PayPal, they weren't someone that people would put faith into. Again, if they couldn't spend the $24/month for a credit card processor, did you really want them hosting your ENTIRE business?

Customer perception is half the battle.
 
bigredseo said:
I think that's really the bigger issue.

Back when i first started in web hosting, and really into the early 2000's, if a web host only accepted PayPal, they weren't someone that people would put faith into. Again, if they couldn't spend the $24/month for a credit card processor, did you really want them hosting your ENTIRE business?

Customer perception is half the battle.
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Agreed. This all goes to the know, like and trust factors in sales - cross industry. Perception of value is huge.
 
I don't think many look at where the cert came from. I know I have never looked and 99% of my purchases are strictly online. If you want to talk about trust do you really think it can be bought for $10? That would be nuts.
 
LittleCreek said:
I don't think many look at where the cert came from. I know I have never looked and 99% of my purchases are strictly online. If you want to talk about trust do you really think it can be bought for $10? That would be nuts.
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a lot of savvy people do look, and all they see is a free SSL or a paid SSL, so it is a case if you canny be bothered to pay for the security they how trustworthy are you.

as a scammer would use free rather than pay for an SSL. it is how it is perceived and not how much the paid cert costs.
 
bigredseo said:
I think that's really the bigger issue.

Back when i first started in web hosting, and really into the early 2000's, if a web host only accepted PayPal, they weren't someone that people would put faith into. Again, if they couldn't spend the $24/month for a credit card processor, did you really want them hosting your ENTIRE business?

Customer perception is half the battle.
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also boils down to how the media report these things. like i also have a market stall that sell 100% genuine branded goods, but the media are always report ' beware buying branded goods on markets as they will be counterfeit' so the media make it out all branded goods on markets are counterfeit when infact less that 1% are counterfeit.

It is the same with SSL certs they always report free SSL certs are used by scammers. so that is how the public see it
 
easyhostmedia said:
a lot of savvy people do look
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Savvy people make the minuscule percentage of all Internet users. It is almost safer to say that nobody cares, given the proportion of people who do versus all people out there. Even advanced Internet users do not know what a SSL certificate is or how to tell if the site has it. They use Internet with their eyes and buy things without thinking if the site is secure or not. They always leave that responsibility to a magical someone else.
 
Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate's still in beta version. They still doesnt release officialy version.

In some case, Let's Encrypt just offer Domain Validation Cert for free in good purpose of creating secure website on the world. So we still can sell OV and EV for company who care about that. LE operation system still has some noisy in their working between their Server and Client server. It's still not stable then it can make some difficulty in troubleshooting SSL on our customer's sites. However, the community support LE in finding issue and offer some new good features is very active and quick.

I think we need more time , maybe 2-3 years, till the day LE release officialy version for LE Certificate. cPanel plugins or Direct Admin plugins, dont trust them completely. They are just up to date with new technology and they always recommended you carefully before you use LE.
 
vinahostsupport said:
Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate's still in beta version. They still doesnt release officialy version.
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No... No it's not:
https://letsencrypt.org/2016/04/12/leaving-beta-new-sponsors.html



vinahostsupport said:
In some case, Let's Encrypt just offer Domain Validation Cert for free in good purpose of creating secure website on the world.
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Yes - that's what they do - a domain validated certificate for free.

vinahostsupport said:
So we still can sell OV and EV for company who care about that.
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We still sell all of our regular certificates - and customers still buy them even when we make them aware of the free option.

vinahostsupport said:
LE operation system still has some noisy in their working between their Server and Client server. It's still not stable then it can make some difficulty in troubleshooting SSL on our customer's sites.
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Troubleshooting SSL has nothing to do with getting a Let's Encrypt certificate issued and installed really. It either gets issued - or it doesn't. Who issues it and how it's issued has nothing to do with troubleshooting SSL issues once it's installed.

vinahostsupport said:
I think we need more time , maybe 2-3 years, till the day LE release officialy version for LE Certificate.
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Hahahaha ... This industry moves far too fast. Most providers I know of already offer Let's Encrypt or something similar.

vinahostsupport said:
cPanel plugins or Direct Admin plugins, dont trust them completely.
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There is risk any time you add third party software.
 
easyhostmedia said:
LetsEncrypt have started and are pushing because google saying they will give priority to sites using SSL certs (https) when indexing, but when you install an ssl it uses mapping to show search engines etc. that your site is secure using and SSL, but when you renew this mapping changes for the new SSL, so by changing this every 90 days google will take it that the site is constantly using trial (temp) SSL certs to get around their new indexing process, which will actually go against the site in googles eyes.
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This project is sponsored and used by some pretty big names, so I very much doubt they are not taken seriously. They are supported in all browsers and on android and ios platforms.

They are not trial certificates. The do not sell certificates, so what are you trialling. They are designed for cdns and shared hosts (hence upto 100 domains per certificate) and have a short life, because often shared host or cdns accounts have a short life.

You won't take an SEO hit if you replace a working certificate with another working certificate. If you did this would also happen around the changing of a 3-year certificate. I would need to see proof of this before I believe it.

(Also DirectAdmin starts to renew at 60 days, in their later updates).
 
It's good that Let's Encrypt offers free SSL certificates for websites. But there is a validity period of 90 days, which requires renewal of the certificate every 90 days.
 
WebHostGlobeCom said:
It's good that Let's Encrypt offers free SSL certificates for websites. But there is a validity period of 90 days, which requires renewal of the certificate every 90 days.
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Which is automated in almost every instance that a user would use it.

If you don't have automated renewal you're doing it yourself manually and you're probably already aware of the limitations.
 
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