IT contractors can soon benefit from greater protection when searching the internet, according to the leading web-search company.

As of next week, Google will be offering encryption on its search function, it has been confirmed in a post on the company's official blog.

Using a lock icon, users will be able to tell which of the websites returned in their search are encrypted, reducing the possibility of accidentally straying on to an unsecure infected site.

Google already offers encryption for Gmail users, which ZDNet Asia claims followed a series of hacking incidents that eventually prompted the firm to move its Chinese-language search operations from Beijing to Hong Kong.

The announcement has been somewhat forced by the admission that the company has been collecting payload data (information sent over the web) from unsecured Wi-Fi networks using its Street View cars.

In an earlier statement on the issue, Google denied it would be collecting this information and it now claims that the harvesting of this information was done by mistake.