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SSL Certificates (SSL stands for “Secure Socket Layer”) are security measures for ensuring the security of information and transactions on your website. These certificates are issued by Certification Authorities (CA), which are recognised companies.
Each SSL Certificate is issued on a Trusted Root CA Certificate, which is either an unsigned public key certificate or a self-signed certificate and forms part of a public key infrastructure scheme. Every SSL certificate has to go through a process of validation before it is approved and accepted by a web-server and web browser. 
When we say SSL certificate validation, it refers to a process whereby the browsers checks the credentials of the SSL certificate and the authority that has issued the SSL certificate. While this might sound like a very complex process taking ages, it isn’t actually so. A web-browser takes less than a second to validate an SSL certificate.
When a browser loads a website and connects to a web-server over SSL, the browser makes an almost instantaneous decision as to whether it will trust the website’s SSL certificate or not. To do this, the SSL certificate has to go through validation, which is based on the validation of the CA that issued the certificate.
To validate the CA, the browser turns toward a list of trusted issuing authorities which is present in its records. This list is actually a collection of Trusted Root CA certificates that all browser vendors add into their browsers.
For SSL certificate validation, root certificates carry a set of public and private key pairs (very much similar to the SSL certificate itself). These key pairs are used to encrypt and decrypt information that is sent between two devices. The CA provider usually retains the private key of the root certificate under heavy guard in its secure data center.
The public key on the other hand is issued to browser and application manufacturers for addition to their list of trusted roots. Once the public key is embedded into the browser or application, the software automatically recognises and trusts any SSL certificate that carries the signature of that root certificate. This makes for easy SSL certificate validation.
SSL certificate validation is very easy for those certificates that have their public key embedded in maximum number of browsers, web-servers and applications. The percentage of browsers, web-servers and applications that an SSL certificate is associated with is known as “browser ubiquity;” higher the browser ubiquity, easier the SSL certificate validation.
Validation is easier and quicker for SSL certificates that are Single Root, meaning they are issued and signed directly by a Trusted Root Certificate. For example, all SSL certificates issued by GeoTrust are Single Root certificates that carry 99.9% browser ubiquity. This makes them highly valid SSL certificates.
If you are searching for a good SSL certificate for your website, you must check and ensure that the certificate stems for a Single Root and will not have any validation issues. For this, you can check if the issuing CA’s Trusted Root is present in most browsers or not.
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