Google To Give Secure Sites A Ranking Boost

Google has announced that going HTTPS — adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site — will give you ranking boost. Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools to better handle HTTPS sites and the reporting on them. Google webmaster trends analyst John Mueller is also answering some questions about the change here.

SSL Certificates bind together a domain name, server name or host name & an organizational identity (i.e. company name) and location.
An organization needs to install the SSL Certificate onto its web server to initiate secure sessions with browsers. Once installed, it is possible to connect to the website over https://www.domain.com, as this tells the server to establish a secure connection with the browser. Once a secure connection is established, all web traffic between the web server and the web browser will be secure. Browsers tell visitors a website is SSL secure via several visible trust indicators:
SSL Certificates need to be issued from a trusted Certificate Authority’s Root Certificate, and preferably by a 2048 bit Certificate that’s widely distributed. The Root Certificate must be present on the end user’s machine in order for the Certificate to be trusted. If it is not trusted the browser will present untrusted error messages to the end user. In the case of e-commerce, such error messages result in immediate lack of confidence in the website and organizations risk losing confidence and business from the majority of consumers.
Source