Google has switched to encrypted search for all users with their Chrome 25 browser.

Google already use encrypted search for users who are logged in to their Google accounts.

Encrypted search is more secure though it is bad news for web publishers who lose access to referrer data from search engines.

The company spoke about this move:

Serving content over SSL provides users with a more secure and private search experience. It helps ensure that malicious actors who might intercept people’s internet traffic can’t see their queries.

Google said that the user experience should not be affected as they use SPDY for secure Google searches inside Chrome. HTTPS based browsing is slightly slower because of the encryption involved. Google developed SPDY for this specific purpose.