SEO

Does website security affect SEO? Vulnerabilities, hacked sites, HTTPS and rankings, sorted out from Google's official documentation

Google does not list vulnerabilities as a ranking factor. The damage comes when one is exploited. Hacked spam pages earn a 'This site may be hacked' label in results, malware or phishing triggers a 'Dangerous site' warning in Chrome (other browsers show their own Safe Browsing warnings), and sites that violate the spam policies may rank lower or not appear at all. HTTPS was announced in 2014 as a 'very lightweight' signal, and Google's current page experience documentation says that beyond Core Web Vitals, other page experience aspects don't directly help a site rank higher. This site's view: for SEO, spend your time on not getting hacked and on noticing quickly if you are, not on raising a security score.