In August, we reported on a number of problems site owners were running into when converting their entire sites to HTTPS because various site integrations weren’t HTTPS-friendly yet. Participants in Google’s Trusted Stores program were among those dealing with incompatibility problems.
The Trusted Store program requires the Google e-commerce verification badge to be displayed on every page of a site, with the exception of cart pages (i.e., the secure pages). So by its very design, the badge does not display on secure pages. And thus, the problem. This has yet to be fixed in any systematic way.
On Wednesday, a Trusted Stores user posted a question on the AdWords Community Forum about whether this support would ever come.
His post in part said,
In May, I was told that we did not qualify to become a trusted store at this time because our entire site is served via HTTPS, that you are aware of this limitation and that it is being addressed. . . . The scripted response I received from the Google Trusted Stores Team in August: The Trusted Stores program requires HTTPS for all pages that handle personal information, such as checkout and order confirmation pages. However, for non-sensitive pages such as product pages, homepage, and informational pages, the program still requires HTTP and is not compatible with HTTPS.Our team agrees that this is an important issue for us to address, for both our partners and users. We are working on a solution to this, but we don’t have additional details to share at this time.
The commenter, Michael P., added, “The suggestion by the Trusted Stores team that they agree this is an important issue is absurd; it is clear that this issue is not being addressed with any urgency.”
At this date, there has not been a response posted to his post.
When we contacted Google to find out the status of adding support, a Google spokesperson told Marketing Land,
“We’re actively working with merchants that have a full HTTPS website to make it possible for them to display the Google Trusted Stores badge. We ask that they please contact us for more information.”
From that statement, it sounds like Google is tackling this on a one-at-a-time basis for some reason rather than pushing out a standard solution.
Site owners in this predicament should reach out to Google if they haven’t already.
Update: A fix has arrived. Google has notified merchants that Google Trusted Stores Is Now HTTPS Compatible
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