Referrers are sort of a Caller ID for web browsers. They tell a web site where someone came from. For example, if you click on a link from one page to visit the next, the page you were on is passed along as referrer information that can be seen using web analytics tools. Sometimes this is also called “referer” information, due to a long-ago misspelling around the referrer standard. “Referral” is also sometimes used.
Last October, Google began blocking referrer information from being passed along by those searching on its search engine, if they were signed-in and using a secure connection.
Google said the change was made to better protect privacy. It turned out to be a precursor to preventing “eavesdropping” of especially private searches that might happen as part of Search Plus Your World.
However, despite saying the move was to protect privacy, Google went out of its way to continue passing along referrer data to paid advertisers. Other loopholes also remain. The move is incredibly hypocritical. See the articles at the end of this story to understand more about the blocking and the hypocrisy in greater depth
If Google is already withholding search term data for signed-in users, then what else could it really pull back? How about reporting even if a search happened.
Beginning in April, Google’s going to begin using the referrer meta tag to report what it calls a “simplified” referrer. The tag will let it override the real referrer that would go out, even what’s left of that referrer after search terms have been stripped.
How The Referrer Meta Tag Turns Searches Into Referrals
Consider a search for “hotels.” If you do that search and click on one of the top listings, say for Travelocity, the actual URL you’re going to looks like this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=hotels&source=web&cd=1 &ved=0CJABEBYwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelocity.com%2FHotels &ei=EftoT6eRLaKxiQK5uYGSBw&usg=AFQjCNHw3v58SOrf2HWCsE6AraxFouCmJQ
The URL doesn’t lead directly to the site. Instead, it redirects through Google itself, in a way that Google can record what’s in the URL to better track the click.
I’ve bolded how Google embeds in the URL information that someone searched for the word “hotels” and clicked on the first listing in the results, which in turn took them to the page at Travelocity, also shown in bold.
If this search is done when someone is signed-in using a secure connection, Google drops the search term portion. It basically looks like this:
http://www.google.com/url?q=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelocity.com%2FHotels
An analytics program can tell that a search happened by seeing the “q=” part in the URL, but the actual term itself has been stripped out by Google. So while Google Analytics can’t report what the search words were (and thus says “not provided”), it still can tell that a search happened.
The new change takes out everything but the start of the referrer. Do a search on Google.com using Chrome, and this is all that will be reported:
https://google.com
Because there’s no indicator that a search happened, an analytics program may interpret that people have come from a link on Google.com rather than doing a search there. This means that search traffic would mistakenly get recorded as what’s called “referral” traffic.
Hitachi Storage Software
Last October, Google began blocking referrer information from being passed along by those searching on its search engine, if they were signed-in and using a secure connection.
Google said the change was made to better protect privacy. It turned out to be a precursor to preventing “eavesdropping” of especially private searches that might happen as part of Search Plus Your World.
However, despite saying the move was to protect privacy, Google went out of its way to continue passing along referrer data to paid advertisers. Other loopholes also remain. The move is incredibly hypocritical. See the articles at the end of this story to understand more about the blocking and the hypocrisy in greater depth
If Google is already withholding search term data for signed-in users, then what else could it really pull back? How about reporting even if a search happened.
Beginning in April, Google’s going to begin using the referrer meta tag to report what it calls a “simplified” referrer. The tag will let it override the real referrer that would go out, even what’s left of that referrer after search terms have been stripped.
How The Referrer Meta Tag Turns Searches Into Referrals
Consider a search for “hotels.” If you do that search and click on one of the top listings, say for Travelocity, the actual URL you’re going to looks like this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=hotels&source=web&cd=1 &ved=0CJABEBYwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelocity.com%2FHotels &ei=EftoT6eRLaKxiQK5uYGSBw&usg=AFQjCNHw3v58SOrf2HWCsE6AraxFouCmJQ
The URL doesn’t lead directly to the site. Instead, it redirects through Google itself, in a way that Google can record what’s in the URL to better track the click.
I’ve bolded how Google embeds in the URL information that someone searched for the word “hotels” and clicked on the first listing in the results, which in turn took them to the page at Travelocity, also shown in bold.
If this search is done when someone is signed-in using a secure connection, Google drops the search term portion. It basically looks like this:
http://www.google.com/url?q=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelocity.com%2FHotels
An analytics program can tell that a search happened by seeing the “q=” part in the URL, but the actual term itself has been stripped out by Google. So while Google Analytics can’t report what the search words were (and thus says “not provided”), it still can tell that a search happened.
The new change takes out everything but the start of the referrer. Do a search on Google.com using Chrome, and this is all that will be reported:
https://google.com
Because there’s no indicator that a search happened, an analytics program may interpret that people have come from a link on Google.com rather than doing a search there. This means that search traffic would mistakenly get recorded as what’s called “referral” traffic.
Hitachi Storage Software
