Google Hints It May Begin Favoring Encrypted Sites in Searches

Google is considering giving a boost to encrypted sites in its search-engine results, one of its top engineers has hinted.

Matt Cutts, an engineer in charge of liaising with website designers and minimizing spam in search, said that by doing so Google would make it harder for third parties to spy on Internet users. He was speaking at the SMX West conference in San Jose, Ca.,

Rewarding sites for adopting encryption “would be a huge step,” said search expert Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land.

Cutts said encouraging encryption was important, because once sites had been hacked “We don’t have the time to maybe hold your hand and walk you through and show you exactly where it happened.”

His comments come in the wake of the discovery of the Heartbleed bug, a vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL encryption scheme that has caused widespread concern among the web community.