Originally Posted by
teddybear99
I found this website bulletin board through Google because I was looking for something related to travel. It would not be available to Google or any search engine if it was secured website (hence the
https://). Also people would not be able to view these boards without logging in either as they can now if it was a secured website. So your screen may show
https://, but it is not a secured website, so your point is moot.
There is a whole bunch of wrong in this. Not only does Google index HTTPS, Google gives a ranking boost to HTTPS sites. As for my screen showing HTTPS but not being secured I just don't think you understand what we're talking about. There is no relationship between https and requiring login. Those are two discreet things. We are talking transport here, and having a secure transport before authentication - not necessarially requiring authentication. If you DO process authentication you should have a secure transport, though, to protect user credentials.
Regarding the crawling, here is some info from the webmasters Google blog regarding HTTPS:
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/20...y-default.html