As a Google Local Guide, I typically contribute to Google Maps on a regular basis. I was checking a few things today, several Google Maps listings, as well as Checking the Facts as a part of the Google Local Guide program, and noticed something rather odd. Google Maps loads over HTTP and not HTTPs. With Google being so adamant about everyone moving their sites to HTTPs and making them secure, I find it rather odd that Google’s own maps results would attempt to load over HTTPs but give a broken lock symbol–meaning that parts of the page is not secure.
This is the exact issue I see time and time again when domain migrations or site migrations go wrong. The site owner will move their website to HTTPs and not change everything on the site over to HTTPs. They’ll load internal resources, like calls to images via HTTP, which causes a broken lock symbol.
I think I found the culprit–but am not 100 percent certain that this is why Google Maps are loading with a broken lock symbol:
In the source code of Google maps, they’re referencing Google Shopping via the HTTP and not the HTTPs. It does look like it 301 redirects to the HTTPs version of Google shopping when I go to that particular URL in the source code, but shouldn’t the internal code be referencing https://www.google.com/shopping/ rather than http://www.google.com/shopping/ ? Regardless if this is causing the broken lock symbol or not, links to Google shopping or references in the source code should be pointing to HTTPs and not HTTP.
I’ve been playing around with Google Maps for a while since my original screen captures above, and of course now I’m not able to reproduce the exact circumstances that has caused the broken lock symbol. However, there definitely is an issue or bug–I was looking at the map in the Baltimore, Maryland area.
A broken lock symbol on your web page can be caused by a number of issues–but it’s not a good thing and should be fixed. Want to learn more about HTTP versus HTTPs and domain migrations? I recently put together an extensive series along with OnCrawl that you might want to check out.
