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Speculation: way back in the day if you Googled for [software marketing service], liked what you saw, and had me Google for it, I'd get substantially the same r
by patio11 14y ago
Speculation: way back in the day if you Googled for [software marketing service], liked what you saw, and had me Google for it, I'd get substantially the same results. That has been increasingly untrue for years, due to geotargeted results, personalization, persistence across searches, search refinement, their datacenter model, yadda yadda. If users expect copy/pasting a link to a search so that someone can repro it to actually work, then that search query now has to carry more state than just "What I typed into the Internet before I clicked the Googles" (totally baffling to users, who think this is what selects their results).
- batgaijin 14y agobut what the hell is the point of that if the url redirects to another url? do they really want to track people copy-pasting urls into email/ims? if so, why not use goo.gl?
- jxi 14y agoWhat redirect? And, did you even read the comment that you're replying to? 1. There isn't a redirect from that huge link. 2. The post replying to just explained a theory that doesn't involve tracking: the URL needs to be that long to be unique enough to specify a page with the exact same search results.
- michaelt 14y agoPerform the following experiment: 1. Visit https://www.google.com/search?q=hackernews https://www.google.com/search?q=hackernews 2. Mouse over first result, note the url news.ycombinator.com shown in your browser's status bar. 3. Right-click the first result and 'copy link location' 4. Check what's on your clipboard. For me it's www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F&ei=fRb5UNSeD-am0AW88YGQBg&usg=AFQjCNGKJHXhsq1s0-gYR96B--m47G9oRw&bvm=bv.41248874,d.d2k 5. Visit said URL in your browser and note you get redirected to news.ycombinator.com As you can see, you are redirected via a huge link.
- janzer 14y agoYes, but that is not the url type being talked about by patio11 or the original article. For the url type under discussion here: 1. Visit https://www.google.com/ https://www.google.com/ 2. type "hackernews" into the search box and hit enter. 3. look at the long url in your address bar.
- bkraptor 14y agoYou can use this addon: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/121923 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/121923
- daave 14y agoAs janzer said, that's not the URL patio11 is talking about, however this redirect is here for a good reason too. It's needed to preserve the search terms in the referrer header for links that are triggered by JavaScript - which is needed if webmasters want to see which search terms are driving traffic to their sites.
- No1 14y agoI presume it's also handy for tracking click-throughs.