Secure search isn’t a new concept at Google. They’ve been pushing it since May 2010, when theSSL-powered padlock was first made available to beta testers who wanted to encrypt their queries on Google.com. Now, however, they’re starting to roll out always-on encrypted search to users who are signed in to a Google account.

While user safety is obviously a concern, there’s plenty of additional motivation for Google. As their own official blog announcement states, personalized search results have a great deal of value to Google. As such, it’s in their best interest to make sure that our queries can’t be intercepted by third parties.

By wrapping searches in SSL encryption, you get a little extra privacy protection and Google gets the reassurance that its delicious user search data juice isn’t getting watered down. Sites you click through to from a page of results will know you arrived via Google, but they won’t have unfettered access to referrer data that tells them what you were searching for.

It’s worth knowing that if your local Google page is a redirect (for example, you get bumped over to Google.ca) your searches aren’t currently encrypted. You can check, of course, by clicking the site information icon in your browser. In Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, it’s at the far left of the address bar next to the URL. If you’re using Internet Explorer 9, just look for the padlock icon in the far right side of the bar.

To force SSL searches, just head to https://encrypted.google.com.

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