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But a request is still a request. It might not make sense to include referer data in the case you mentioned but that does not mean every cros request will fit t
by Achshar 14y ago
But a request is still a request. It might not make sense to include referer data in the case you mentioned but that does not mean every cros request will fit that description.
- abcd_f 14y agoGive me an example where sending a Referer is essential to providing me as a user with a better experience. There are no such cases, period. Also, with an exception of dumb content protection schemes (anti-hot-linking), Referrers are used exclusively for tracking purposes and carry zero positive benefits for the users. If Mozilla is in fact "passionate about putting its users first", these headers must go. It is as simple as this.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Retric 14y agoHow about newspapers that show articles when a user comes from Google but not otherwise?
- epmatsw 14y agoHow is that a better experience? This is a legitimate question, I don't think I understand what you're referring to.
- anonymoushn 14y agoI think he means that showing you an article is a better experience than not showing you an article.
- Achshar 14y agoMaybe he means cases where newspaper sites let users skip paywall if they are coming from google x times a month.
- cbr 14y agoReferrers are used exclusively for tracking purposes and carry zero positive benefits for the users. This is short sighted. Sites can respond to referrers by improving themselves and better adapting to what users are looking for.
- huhtenberg 14y agoSure, in theory.
- icebraining 14y agoAnti-hot-linking may be dumb to protect the content, but it's very useful to protect others from abusing sites as if they were free image hosters. I run a small site, and we would occasionally get hotlinked by random people searching for images on Google, which would kill our bandwidth caps. If it weren't for referer filters, we'd have to hide any image for unregistered users. That said, keep just first-party referers would be fine - we'd just block any image request without referer.
- lftl 14y agoI don't think the referer info is ever really essential but here are some possibilities: 1) If you came from a social media site, maybe I'd highlight that particular social sharing option in a share bar, or hide others. 2) In an e-commerce store, maybe Google sent you to some page on my site that isn't really the best for your search term (product discontinued, other better matching product), I can give you a link to that other page. Google isn't necessarily magical in its ability to pick the best page on a site for a specific term. Maybe if you come from a competitor I can highlight some content that compares my product to the competitor's. 3) I've never derived a ton of benefit from it, but some sites will highlight your search term for you on a page. It could possibly also automatically scroll you to a relevant section if it's a long page and what you searched for is an exact match for some subsection. In general it can be a valuable data point sites can use to improve the end-user experience. That being said, I can't think of anything where the value really outweighs the potential for abuse, but I think saying that it has no value to the user is short-sighted.
- bsimpson 14y agoIsn't the Referrer header what Google Analytics et. al. use to tell you how people are finding pages on your site? Seems like that could be quite useful for a webmaster to learn more about his audience, tailoring his content to better fit the traffic coming from those sources and identifying other sites that might be abusive (e.g. scraping his content).
- potch 14y agoThe ability to highlight search terms in a page. You may disagree that is a better experience for you, but you may not make blanket statements that "there are no such cases, period".