According to a new post over on the Webmaster Central blog, Google is rolling out a change to their search alogrithym that will give a boost to sites running under HTTPS secure connections: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html
Google now recommends websites use an HTTPS connection for serving all content, with at least a 2048-bit certificate. They also provided a link to a tool by Qualys SSL Labs that can test your site’s SSL configuration: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
After a number of vulnerabilities that have come to light in recent years due to insecure HTTP connections (especially on Wireless networks), and many large sites changing over to HTTPS connections (Facebook/Twitter/Google/Yahoo ), Google continues to push for HTTPS everywhere.