Today, Google introduces encrypted web search engine. Rather than Google at the usual http://google.com/ URL, you should search with Google SSL Search if you want to protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network. When you search with Google SSL, your search queries and search traffic are encrypted so they can’t be read by any intermediary party such as employers, network administrators and internet service providers (ISPs). SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that helps provide secure Internet communications for services like web browsing, e-mail, and other data transfers.
When you search on Google SSL Search, an encrypted connection is created between your browser and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network. For example, when you search over SSL for embarassing terms like [ free dating ] in your office, Google encrypts the query “free dating” and the results that Google returns. While SSL helps prevent intermediary parties, such as ISPs, from knowing the exact search that you typed, they could still know which websites you visit once you click on the search results.
Google SSL could help improve your online privacy. However, there are a few notes to remember about Google SSL:
- Google will still maintain search data. Searching over SSL doesn’t reduce the data sent to Google. It only hides that data from third parties who seek it.
- Clicking on any of the web results, including Google universal search results for unsupported services like Google Images, could take you out of SSL mode.
- Your experience with search over Google SSL might be slightly slower than your regular Google search experience as connections to Google SSL require additional time to set up the encryption between your browser and the remote web server.
