Google Secure Search Going Global, So Is Not Provided

A WebmasterWorld thread links to a story that says Google has recently begun defaulting to Google's secure, encrypted search worldwide.

Here is a statement from Niki Christoff, Google's Director of Corporate Communications:

The revelations of this past summer underscored our need to strengthen our networks. Among the many improvements we've made in recent months is to encrypt Google Search by default around the world. This builds on our work over the past few years to increase the number of our services that are encrypted by default and encourage the industry to adopt stronger security standards.

Honestly, I thought Google's secure search was default globally already based on my 93% not provided count. But I guess, it will soon be 100%.

Yes, as Google defaults all search to SSL, it will stripe out the referral query data and marketers will lose out as well. Most don't care if it goes global because most have already lost 90%+.

But we are eagerly awaiting what Google is going to announce with the upcoming not provided changes.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has penalized a few more international link networks on Friday afternoon. Google went after, as promised Italian and Spanish networks and those who participated in them - as well as a couple more Germany link networks.

Earlier in the day on Friday, Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, tweeted that Google has "taken action" on another German link network, this one named efamous plus a German agency network. This is the second time in almost two months that Google booted a Germany link agency and network. The thing isefamous looks pretty legit but I guess behind the scenes, in Google's mind, it was not?

Later on in the day, this may be somewhat historic, but Matt Cutts didn't announce it first, that they penalized an Italian and Spanish link network. Giacomo Gnecchi, a Google search quality analysts who has been with Google for maybe about 4 years, tweeted it in Italian and then much later, Matt Cutts retweeted it and then posted a translated version on Twitter. This shouldn't be a surprise because Matt warned it days before.