Using SSL search will also cut down on the information you'll be giving to websites you visit from your search results. The company explained in its blog that a website will still know a query came from Google, but that the site won't receive information about individual queries.

Advertisers, though, will be unaffected by the new scheme. "If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you," Google Product Manager Evelyn Kao wrote in the blog.

"We hope that today's move to increase the privacy and security of your Web searches is only the next step in a broader industry effort to employ SSL encryption more widely and effectively," she added.

While SSL is a good step toward making the Web more secure, it's by no means a panacea. "Man in the Middle" attacks have been designed to thwart it, for example. One such attack will reroute your SSL traffic to an insecure site by from https to http.

Another method hacks the SSL server so it responds to an SSL request from your browser with a redirect message. That shifts your browser to an insecure site where the hacker can do dirty deeds to your data.