travel only

thanks.  Only 3+ years late

Jason, he sent you a PM to tell you, and everything...

Firefox 14.01 just out. Firefox G searches are now SSL by default.

I swear I read somewhere that if the searcher gets taken to a https page then you can see the referrer data.
e.g. https -> https (works)
https -> http (doesn't)

Is that right or did I dream that?

Quote from: Chunkford on July 17, 2012, 04:25:44 PM
I swear I read somewhere that if the searcher gets taken to a https page then you can see the referrer data.
e.g. https -> https (works)
https -> http (doesn't)

Is that right or did I dream that?

Yep that's correct, Jason has a post on here somewhere that broke down all the permutations of how you can/can't get referral data but that's the main gist of it.

Between this and the ever increasing use of sample data analytics is starting to get a bit flakey

Quote from: BoL on July 17, 2012, 04:47:28 PM

Quote from: Chunkford on July 17, 2012, 04:25:44 PM
I swear I read somewhere that if the searcher gets taken to a https page then you can see the referrer data.
e.g. https -> https (works)
https -> http (doesn't)

Is that right or did I dream that?

Yep that's correct, Jason has a post on here somewhere that broke down all the permutations of how you can/can't get referral data but that's the main gist of it.

So if we go 100% ssl we get our data back? That seems too easy

Seems to be that way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer

QuoteIf a website is accessed from a HTTP Secure (HTTPS) connection and a link points to anywhere except another secure location, then the referer field is not sent.[6] (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3)

An interesting sentence after that regarding HTML 5.

QuoteThe upcoming standard HTML5 will support the attribute/value rel = "noreferrer" in order to instruct the user agent not to send a referer.[7]

> So if we go 100% ssl we get our data back? That seems too easy

It is too easy

SSL -> SSL sends referer - that isn't the issue.

G purposely fakes the referer by replacing the real search referal URL with  fake URL. Hence the "Not provided" issue

I thought that was the case. Would have been kicking myself for weeks if I'd missed that.

It could be possible to workout the entry keyword from [secure search] keywords.  G is still giving the rankings for the secured search keywords, so if you know how you're ranking for certain keywords you can make a pretty good educated guess.  No programs doing this yet though that I know of.

They are providing the keywords to the paid advertisers (PPC) but not to the organic traffic. It's unfair but we get used to that.