Google announced HTTPS as a ranking signal in 2014, confirming that, all else equal, an HTTPS site gets a small ranking preference over an HTTP equivalent. It was described at the time as a "lightweight" signal — weighted far less than content quality, backlinks, or relevance.
Why it matters more indirectly than directly
The bigger SEO risk today isn't a small ranking penalty — it's that Chrome and other browsers mark plain HTTP pages as "Not Secure," which measurably increases bounce rate and erodes visitor trust before they even engage with your content. That behavioral signal (people leaving quickly) affects rankings far more than the direct HTTPS bonus itself.
The migration risk to manage
A poorly executed HTTP-to-HTTPS migration — missing 301 redirects, not updating your sitemap, forgetting to add the https:// property in Search Console — can cause a temporary ranking dip that has nothing to do with HTTPS itself and everything to do with search engines needing to reprocess the moved URLs. Follow the migration checklist properly (see our HTTPS Migration category) and this isn't a real concern.
Why the indirect, behavioral effect likely outweighs the direct ranking signal
Chrome's Not Secure warning on plain HTTP pages measurably increases bounce rate, and that behavioral signal, visitors leaving quickly, plausibly affects rankings more than the officially confirmed, explicitly lightweight direct HTTPS ranking boost itself — the practical SEO risk today is mostly about visitor trust and engagement, not the ranking algorithm's direct treatment of the protocol.
What to specifically avoid during a migration to protect existing rankings
Missing 301 redirects, an outdated sitemap still referencing http:// URLs, and forgetting to add the https:// property in Search Console are the concrete, avoidable mistakes that actually cause ranking disruption during a migration — none of them are inherent to HTTPS itself, they're simply migration steps worth following carefully.
Why Search Console treats http:// and https:// as entirely separate properties
Google Search Console requires adding the https:// version of your domain as its own distinct property, since it doesn't automatically merge historical data from the old http:// property — submitting a fresh sitemap and monitoring the new property specifically is a necessary migration step, not an optional extra.
What Google's own documentation currently says about the signal's weight
Google's official guidance continues to describe HTTPS as one of many ranking signals, explicitly weighted less heavily than content quality and relevance, while still recommending HTTPS as a baseline best practice independent of any direct ranking consideration — the company has not published updated guidance suggesting the weighting has meaningfully increased since the original 2014 announcement.
Why a poorly executed migration causes more SEO damage than HTTPS itself ever could
The realistic SEO risk in any migration comes from broken redirects, an outdated sitemap, or a missed Search Console property, not from HTTPS itself — following a proper migration checklist, covered in our HTTPS Migration category, is what actually protects existing rankings through the transition.
What to actually prioritize if SEO is your primary concern
If search visibility specifically is your priority, spend your effort on a clean, correctly executed migration with proper redirects and Search Console setup, rather than worrying about HTTPS's direct ranking weight — execution quality matters far more than the underlying signal's modest size.
What Google's Search Central documentation specifically recommends beyond the basic signal
Google's own Search Central documentation recommends HTTPS primarily framed around user trust and security rather than as a significant ranking lever specifically — the official guidance consistently emphasizes content quality and user experience as the dominant ranking factors, with HTTPS positioned as baseline best practice.
A closing thought
A quick closing thought: whatever the exact ranking weight, HTTPS's other benefits, genuine security, visitor trust, HTTP/2 performance, would justify the migration on their own even if the SEO signal didn't exist at all.