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Last week, Google made an announcement that SSL Search (https://www.google.com) will become the default for Google signed in users. This change will be happening over the next coming weeks. According to the Big G, “…a website accessed through organic search results on http://www.google.com (non-SSL) can see both that the user came from google.com and their search query… However, for organic search results on SSL search, a web site will only know that the user came from google.com”. There will still be keyword data provided from those that used the Paid search advertising.

While nobody can be certain what exactly this will do the the SEO frontier, we can safely make assumptions that it will change the way we can use analytics data. While Google claims that they are doing this to protect user privacy so that logged in users not be showing their searches to the websites they visit, this is most likely part of the overall strategy to make more people stay logged into their Google accounts, as well as leverage their AdWords advertising platform. At this point, it is all mainly speculation, but it is still important to think about.

In an Emergency Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz’ Rand Fishkin addressed the major issues regarding this change. At this point, as Rand explains in the video, we should measure and track how much lost keyword data we are experiencing over time in hopes of better understanding how this change will affect organic SEO for Google. While he maintains a neutral stance on the whole matter, he urges the inbound marketing community to express their opinions and feedback to Google. Rather than just get upset about it, we can also figure out how to adapt and tweak our overall SEO strategies.