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Say goodbye to search analytics

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Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#51

Post by jsz0 »

subbu wrote: post #4
barredo wrote: post #2

tl;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?

A Facebook advertiser could make the same argument about having access to more user data. Most people probably think their searches are private already.

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#52

Post by jacquesm »

stingraycharles wrote: post #46
btmorex wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> a part is based on the search queries you enter into Google

Can you prove that?

Because I have looked for proof of that and have not found any.

There seems to be a fair sized Chinese wall between google search and google adsense/adwords.

To the extent that they indeed use another crawler, if they shared data with search that would be the first place to see it.

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#53

Post by rubinelli »

raquo wrote: post #50
tptacek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My thoughts, exactly. Why would they use more resources and slow down page load for users who couldn't care less?

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#54

Post by _delirium »

schammy wrote: post #17
ErrantX wrote: post #11

So,basically, this threatens his business so he rants about it. Fair enough be concerned for your business - but attacking DDG and Google for it is unlikely to win favours :P

That's certainly part of the reason, but I also have the POV of someone who runs many web sites, and I know how annoying it would be to lose search analytics. This is for the greater good of anyone who owns a site. Knowing what searches people are doing to get to your site is extremely important.

You can get some version of analytics directly from Google via Webmaster Tools. It's a bit more aggregated and anonymized, though.

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#55

Post by nzmsv »

gmurphy wrote: post #13

Technical reason: Referers aren't sent when transitioning from an SSL page to a non-SSL page - to get the referer sent along, there would need to be an intermediate HTTP step and redirect, which would be slower, and would defeat the point of secure search. Here is the bug in Chromium where this was added: http://crbug.com/29920

Also, converting the entire site to https will get the referer back. At least with Firefox: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferr...

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#56

Post by tptacek »

rubinelli wrote: post #53
raquo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My thoughts, exactly. Why would they use more resources and slow down page load for users who couldn't care less?

Because most users don't know enough to make an informed decision, and SSL is the conservative choice?

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#57

Post by Kadin »

paraschopra wrote: post #10
barredo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But any webmaster's power ends at the limits of their site. I guess that's it. User's rights are above webmaster's right. If you don't like them you can start disallowing search engines in your robots.txt or blocking users by referrer.

But search engines shouldn't block referrer by default. Majority of users don't care about telling web masters what they were searching for. So search engines should only let users who do care about privacy to block referrer, block it by default is a poor choice (unless you are DDG and privacy is your differentiator)

It's only blocked if you use https search, not if you use http. Most users don't use https and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Google is going to redirect http://www.google.com to https, so they seem to be doing what you suggest already.

On the https side, not passing the referrer is the correct behavior, and to do differently would break a great number of RFCs in all likelihood, as well as be unexpected/insecure behavior in an environment where the user has explicitly requested security. User preference trumps webmaster convenience, always.

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#58

Post by madair »

paraschopra wrote: post #10
barredo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But any webmaster's power ends at the limits of their site. I guess that's it. User's rights are above webmaster's right. If you don't like them you can start disallowing search engines in your robots.txt or blocking users by referrer.

But search engines shouldn't block referrer by default. Majority of users don't care about telling web masters what they were searching for. So search engines should only let users who do care about privacy to block referrer, block it by default is a poor choice (unless you are DDG and privacy is your differentiator)

I'm presuming you don't have any reliable research to back up what "the users" care about in regards to their privacy. (Sounds a bit close to a politician talking about what Americans want, too.)

Its doubtful that most even realize.

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#59

Post by litewulf »

rubinelli wrote: post #53
raquo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My thoughts, exactly. Why would they use more resources and slow down page load for users who couldn't care less?

They made Gmail default to HTTPS, and the same argument could apply for both.

Re: Say goodbye to search analytics

#60

Post by daleharvey »

sketerpot wrote: post #26
paraschopra wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But search engines shouldn't block referrer by default. Majority of users don't care about telling web masters what they were searching for. So search engines should only let users who do care about privacy to block referrer, block it by default is a poor choice (unless you are DDG and privacy is your differentiator)

I would actually really like for my search engine referrer headers to be blocked, even without the privacy concerns, for one simple reason: some web sites highlight the search terms they find in search engine referrer headers. That annoys the crap out of me, and I usually end up either closing the tab or going to the URL bar and adding and deleting a space in there, then reloading the page without referrer headers. W…

the same reason google do it?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=terms

people dont like reading stuff, when the search they scan for the relevant content.

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