So giving people the option to hide their searches from tyrannical regimes, snooping schools and overbearing corporate IT firms, let alone a kid with a copy of wireshark at a local café is evil? Grow up. It's in beta and will unlikely ever become the default due to the extra latency and server load. Ignore all that and seek for attention anyhow.
Say goodbye to search analytics
41–50 of 67 posts
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#42If Google Adsense still has access to this data to serve more relevant ads on the destination site and other ad providers don't then it is very anti-competitive.
Umm... Adsense doesn't need a referrer and it definitely doesn't need search terms. Adsense crawls every page that it serves ads for and that's going to be better context then any analytics packages would offer.
What someone searched for is very valuable when it comes to context, you can crawl and index a page to see its about iPod Accessories - but you can look at the referral and see the person searched for iPod Touch Case and make the ads that much better.
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#43What a pathetic overreaction. Google’s words: “[…] we’re gradually rolling out a new choice to search more securely […]”. Gradually. Choice. It’s beta. There is no indication that this will ever be the default.
It’s pretty clear to me that Google sees this as a feature for the tiny minority of people who care about such things.
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#44Sour grapes.....
If what google wanted was to stop letting search terms show up in weblogs of sites they linked to, they could have done it plenty of other ways, cheaper and easier than rolling out SSL globally.... and they were never obligated to provide this to us in the first place.
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#45tl;dr: web analytics company starts claiming bullshit about privacy in search engines Also, in other news: some people start claiming bullshit about issues than are better for other people but bad for them. ps. I did upvote this post in HN just for the sake of discussion and comments, but I don't like the tone of the original poster with his 'HN hipsters' and 'BS' all around.
IMHO his argument seems valid. My site's Google Analytics tells me what were the search terms and which search engine sent me the traffic. Why not share that with the web masters if that can help them create better content or tweak their SEO?
Us users don't want google to direct us to the site with the best SEO guys on any given topic - we want them to direct us to the sites that are most likely to contain the data we are searching for.
Google's job, to stay on top of the search engine market, is to keep delivering good results to those doing searches - that's how they keep their audience, and keep selling ads.
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#46If Google Adsense still has access to this data to serve more relevant ads on the destination site and other ad providers don't then it is very anti-competitive.
Umm... Adsense doesn't need a referrer and it definitely doesn't need search terms. Adsense crawls every page that it serves ads for and that's going to be better context then any analytics packages would offer.
Adsense uses behavioral targeting, of which a part is based on the search queries you enter into Google (as in, when you're searching for "christmas toys" on Google, for a certain amount of time you become a hot target for relevant ads in Adsense).
Other ad providers were able to mimic this by analyzing the referrer urls from which people were being redirected. This is not possible anymore. If Adsense doesn't disable this functionality, then Google is indeed acting anticompetitive.
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#47Proof that no matter what you do, some people will be unhappy about it.
True. But I think in this situation no one except Google will be happy (and I doubt they'll be happy too). Web analytics helps webmasters make their sites more attractive for end users. I use Google Analytics on most of my sites, but I don't like the way how Google tries to "encourage" others to do it.
Wait, what? You think Google should deny users SSL so that analytics can work better? That can't be what you're implying, can it?
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#48If Google Adsense still has access to this data to serve more relevant ads on the destination site and other ad providers don't then it is very anti-competitive.
It's anticompetitive to allow people to use SSL to talk to your service? Google doesn't control the Referer header, your browser does.
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#49Proof that no matter what you do, some people will be unhappy about it.
True. But I think in this situation no one except Google will be happy (and I doubt they'll be happy too). Web analytics helps webmasters make their sites more attractive for end users. I use Google Analytics on most of my sites, but I don't like the way how Google tries to "encourage" others to do it.
except Google and errrm maybe users? count me as happy.
Re: Say goodbye to search analytics
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. But I think in this situation no one except Google will be happy (and I doubt they'll be happy too). Web analytics helps webmasters make their sites more attractive for end users. I use Google Analytics on most of my sites, but I don't like the way how Google tries to "encourage" others to do it.
Wait, what? You think Google should deny users SSL so that analytics can work better? That can't be what you're implying, can it?
Everyone assumes that SSL search will be ever turned on by default (seems unlikely). I think it would be most natural to make SSL search opt-in. Anyone who cares about his/her privacy will be able to turn it on and webmasters will still have most of the data they need.