Google's Push for HTTPS is a Failure

At least for now anyway.

For the past year or so Google has been strongly encouraging everyone to enable https everywhere. They've even gone as far as boosting search results for sites that only offer https.

so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal -Google

At first glance this seems like a wonderful idea. I don't particularly want anyone snooping on my personal traffic. I wouldn't mind getting even more traffic to my sites. Seems like a win/win. So what could possibly go wrong with this and rain on Google's parade?

Strangely enough it's actually Google that is preventing the https migration from occuring. The vast majority of content sites on the internet earn their revenues through ad placements on their sites. The biggest (not to mention best paying) ad network is Google's AdSense. While AdSense technically supports https, the pool of ads is significantly less than the http ad pool.

Why does that matter? Ad publishers bid against each other for the best websites and content locations. A smaller ad pool means fewer people to bid against. That translates into cheaper prices. Good for the publisher perhaps, but bad for the content sites. And no, the minimal extra traffic from Google doesn't make up for it.

As it stands now, any content site that goes https only will see a significant drop in their revenues.

If Google truly wants https everywhere as they claim, they are the ones that need to make it happen.

References:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html