Roberto Bayardo, a research scientist at Google, who works specifically on computational advertising, joked on Google+ that his web site no longer ranks on the first page of Google for [bayardo].
He said shortly after that maybe he needs to go HTTPS to get the ranking boost. He said, "I may have to cave and go HTTPS to get some ranking boost." He then added "Or maybe I could instead make my site suck a bit less. That might be better."
Maybe...
I don't think Roberto Bayardo works on anything related to the search algorithm directly, so this is just funny to read.
Roberto Bayardo, try going HTTPS, see what happens.
Forum discussion at Google+.