Over the last few years, Google brought support for encrypted HTTPS connections to almost all of its products, including search, Gmail and Google Drive. It’s now even using HTTPS support as a ranking signal in its search results. Starting today, the company is also bringing HTTPS support to its Blogspot blogging platform.
Google hosts its own blogs on Blogspot and starting today, both the Official Google Blog and the Google Online Security Blog will use HTTPS. Others will follow soon, though it’s a bit odd that the Blogger blog isn’t using this feature yet.
Google argues that using HTTPS will help ensure that bad actors can’t track authors and visitors on a site, and that visitors aren’t being redirected to a “malicious location.”
For regular users, HTTPS support on Blogspot will roll out gradually, but if you’re blogging on Google’s platform, you can already opt in to use it today.
There are some caveats here, though: if you are using a custom domain, this won’t work yet. Also, once you enable this feature, chances are some features in your templates and gadgets won’t work because they weren’t written for sites on secure connections and may lead to mixed content errors.