3 ms·

HTTPS does not kill referrer or referer headers. See https://referer.rustybrick.com/ https://referer.rustybrick.com/

bobby_9x 11y ago
..so why are all of the search terms suddenly gone from google searche referer headers? Which happened at the same time google defaulted to https?
- kuschku 11y ago
  At that time they started using horribly annoying redirects.
- dangrossman 11y ago
  They stopped linking search results directly to the webpages. You have no Google search referrer headers in your logs/analytics any more. When the SERP loads, all the results link to the real webpages, so that you see their address in the browser status bar when hovering over a link. Clicking any result link triggers a script that replaces the URL with https://google.com/url?url=the_real_webpage_url https://google.com/url?url=the_real_webpage_url. When you click through, you're clicking a link from google.com to another link on google.com, which redirects to the webpage you intended to visit. The referrer the webpage sees is the intermediate google.com/url page, instead of the search result page. This prevents websites from getting search term data from the SERP URL, if it was present, by removing that URL from referrer headers entirely.
- windsurfer 11y ago
  Did you read the page I linked to? My referer was https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=What%20Is%20My%20Secure%20Referrer https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=What%20Is%20My%2...
  - mynameisvlad 11y ago
    Uh, the referrer is the page you came from. So if he opened the page on HN, then he wouldn't get the Google referrer, he'd get a page off HN.
    - windsurfer 11y ago
      If you read the page I linked to, it instructs you to search to try it out for yourself to see that search results are not stripped from the referrer.
- josteink 11y ago
  > ..so why are all of the search terms suddenly gone from google searche referer headers? Which happened at the same time google defaulted to https? Not related to HTTPS at all. This happened completely independently. It happened because Google went from having search URLs like this https://google.com/?q=term To https://google.com/#q=term And the things after the anchor-mark is never in your referer. Effectively this means that the only tool on the planet who knows what people searched for before entering your site is... Google Analytics. As a website owner you're basically being co-erced into letting Google snoop on your users, at least if you want to know how they entered your site. And the fact of the matter that is most (all?) companies are willing to make that trade-off. All in all pretty sad and very creepy.

..so why are all of the search terms suddenly gone from google searche referer headers? Which happened at the same time google defaulted to https?

kuschku 11y ago
At that time they started using horribly annoying redirects.
dangrossman 11y ago
They stopped linking search results directly to the webpages. You have no Google search referrer headers in your logs/analytics any more. When the SERP loads, all the results link to the real webpages, so that you see their address in the browser status bar when hovering over a link. Clicking any result link triggers a script that replaces the URL with https://google.com/url?url=the_real_webpage_url https://google.com/url?url=the_real_webpage_url. When you click through, you're clicking a link from google.com to another link on google.com, which redirects to the webpage you intended to visit. The referrer the webpage sees is the intermediate google.com/url page, instead of the search result page. This prevents websites from getting search term data from the SERP URL, if it was present, by removing that URL from referrer headers entirely.
windsurfer 11y ago
Did you read the page I linked to? My referer was https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=What%20Is%20My%20Secure%20Referrer https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=What%20Is%20My%2...
- mynameisvlad 11y ago
  Uh, the referrer is the page you came from. So if he opened the page on HN, then he wouldn't get the Google referrer, he'd get a page off HN.
  - windsurfer 11y ago
    If you read the page I linked to, it instructs you to search to try it out for yourself to see that search results are not stripped from the referrer.
josteink 11y ago
> ..so why are all of the search terms suddenly gone from google searche referer headers? Which happened at the same time google defaulted to https? Not related to HTTPS at all. This happened completely independently. It happened because Google went from having search URLs like this https://google.com/?q=term To https://google.com/#q=term And the things after the anchor-mark is never in your referer. Effectively this means that the only tool on the planet who knows what people searched for before entering your site is... Google Analytics. As a website owner you're basically being co-erced into letting Google snoop on your users, at least if you want to know how they entered your site. And the fact of the matter that is most (all?) companies are willing to make that trade-off. All in all pretty sad and very creepy.