With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience.

To use search over SSL, visit https://www.google.com ( https not http) each time you perform a search. Note that only Google web search is available over SSL, so other search products like Google Images and Google Maps are not currently available over SSL. When you’re searching over SSL, these properties may not appear in the left panel.

Why HTTPS is important

• The correct use of HTTPS, as signified by a URL starting with https:// and an unbroken lock icon in the corner of the browser window, allows you to be sure that:
  1. the page you’re looking at was sent in encrypted form, so that eavesdroppers cannot read it; and
  2. a “Certificate Authority” trusted by the people who supplied your browser has done some basic checking that the organization you’re talking to really owns the domain.
• Two of the biggest privacy problems with sites that do not use HTTPS are vulnerability to wholesale “dragnet” surveillance, and vulnerability to local network eavesdropping, especially on wireless networks:
  • Dragnet surveillance by ISPs, advertisers and governments is a problem in many places, from Iran to the United States. HTTPS makes dragnet surveillance much more difficult, although traffic analysis is still possible.
  • Watching the HTTP traffic of other people on a wireless network is extremely easy. Do you really want your neighbours, or other people in the same cafe as you to see what you’re searching for?Many people think they’re safer if they use an “encrypted” wireless network, but the feeling is largely misplaced. Firstly, others who know the network password can still listen with minimal effort. Secondly, there are trivially easy attacks on WEP encryption and more sophisticated attacks that work against WPA2 even if the eavesdropper doesn’t know the password.
• Not using HTTPS also leaves you vulnerable to more subtle long-range hacking attacks such as those involving falsifying DNS responses.
• Encrypting search results with HTTPS has subtle privacy effects with respect to the HTTP Referrer header. Because of fine print in the HTTP spec, an HTTPS search results page hides your query terms from any non-HTTPS sites you might click through to, but not from HTTPS sites.

The Limits of HTTPS Encrypted Search

If the sites you visit as a result of searching are not encrypted, the fact that you’re reading them is still visible to eavesdroppers — the one thing that’s hidden are your search terms themselves.

On the other hand, as more sites on the web become available via HTTPS, the lack of a major encrypted web search engine becomes the weakest link in the community’s ability to browse those sites in privacy.

for more :Official Google Blog

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