Dotcom-Monitor Web Performance Blog - Website Monitoring You Can Trust

Google Announces HTTPS as a Ranking Signal for SEO

It’s official, Google openly “encourage(s) all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.”

On Wednesday, August 06, 2014 – Google announced HTTPS as a ranking signal for SEO. If you’re not familiar, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a communications protocol for secure communication, protecting the connection to the website through authentication and encryption. Utilizing HTTPS to secure all traffic on your website ensures your site visitors that their information, both what they consume and what they submit, is secured from prying eyes as the data travels across the internet.

For the most part, you do not have control over where your data travels in between your web servers and your visitors browsers, but you do have control over how that data is secured. Encrypting your traffic prevents hackers, governments, security agencies, ISPs and anyone else who might try to view your data from doing so. It also helps protect your site from fraud and helps protect your visitors’ identities and reputation.

Who is Migrating to HTTPS?

HTTPS isn’t just for your bank or credit card anymore. Giants like PayPal, Google, Twitter and Facebook have all migrated, and with the recent news of Google’s SERP algo update, most Fortune 500s are scrambling to switch as well. According to the Trustworthy Internet Movement, as of August 2 2014, over 28% of the net’s most popular websites have already migrated to HTTPS, and now that Google has announced that it affects search engine rankings we expect the majority of major sites to follow suit.

So what are the steps to implement this process?

Leveraging Dotcom-Monitor services, NCM Online developed fact-based observations about the performance of 20 leading web hosts in June, and continues to test additional hosts throughout the year (the most recent update to the list was 8/2/2014). These tests include purchasing a shared hosting plan from each provider and gathering page-load speed averages and uptime percentages from at least 10 concurrent days using identical websites on each provider. This process provides 2 of the ten criteria NCM Online uses to rank different shared hosting service providers.

Anthony Ailed, Online editor at NCM stated that their review process is “heavily” objective. Ailed explained that the best way to stand out from other ranking sites is to provide rankings that are predominantly data-driven. “There are hundreds of Web hosting review sites online.” Explained Ailed, but “Of the 10 criteria we utilize to rank hosts, eight exclude the reviewer’s opinion.”

Utilizing Dotcom-Monitor performance metrics gives NCM Online a truly independent view of their websites on each host from different monitoring locations around the world.

User Interface Update:

There are several exciting new features along with some updated cosmetic changes to the Dotcom-Monitor user interface.

Here is a brief overview of the changes:

The color scheme has been updated to make the site easier to read.
On the Device Manager (The first page you see when you log in), you can now see the details of the packages you have purchased, including the maximum monitoring frequency and # tasks available / total tasks purchased.
The Device Manager now displays DOWN when the status of a device is down based upon the schedules and filters you have applied to the device

August 1, 2014 – Dotcom-Monitor is currently tracking a Facebook downtime incident.

To verify the current status of Facebook in real-time from around the world, users can attempt to connect simultaneously from 20 locations worldwide using Dotcom-Monitor’s free Facebook downtime test tool.

Voice Connectivity is Critical

Your phone systems have gone down and you are unable to communicate with your customers. After several hours of troubleshooting you have managed to get the services up again but what do you do now?

Whether you utilize a SIP based VoIP system, digital voice over T1 lines or POTS (plain old telephone service), those voice services need to be available.

There are a number of ways you can monitor your telephone services. If you manage a calling center or support lines for your customers then inbound connectivity is critical. If you manage outbound calling centers or sales teams then you need to make sure those calls are connected.