Google to remove referrer information?

[davids355]

Heard this elsewhere that google are planning to remove referrer information so you can't track what your visitors typed into google to land on your site.

Anyone else have any info about if this is true?

 

[thetrustedzone]

i don't think google will do stupid thing like this , what's your source ?

 

[davids355]

Statcounter.com

 

[davids355]

That happened a long time ago when Google.com became ssl by default.

Did it? I still get all my search terms in my statcounter...??

But I have heard that it is due to be stopped (future tense). Heard it 3rd hand so I will check the source direct, but...

 

[WordKey]

That happened a long time ago when Google.com became ssl by default.

 

[PhillyLuke]

Yeah old news -

Not sure what kind of stats you folks are seeing, but here's a few niches and the % of "not provided" search terms I got:

Legal/Law Firm - 24.9% Blocked
Rock Magazine - 21.8 % Blocked
Construction - 24% Blocked
Software Company - 25.2% Blocked

The face that I can't dig into these blocked terms is killing me, but not much I can do about it - still enough data to make valid decisions based on the rest of the keywords though.

I think it's a ridiculous move by Google. More than SEO's use keyword data in their analyses.

 

[StormClaw]

David Just calm down and Back to work

 

[thetrustedzone]

Statcounter.com

I'm using statcounter too hmm.. reliable source , but why google will do
stupid thing like this ?

 

[davids355]

David Just calm down and Back to work

Hahaha

 

[PhillyLuke]

Also for those mentioning not seeing any blocked search terms in other stat providers - I've have some of my sites set up with 2 analytics tools - (google + getclicky) and the latter isn't able to access those blocked referrers as well.

I'm assuming these other 3rd party tools might not display them

 

[no4h~]

This happened awhile ago man, it's no rumor ;0.

Google Analytics blog to explain it a bit further.. http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure-accessing.html

 

[cybersage]

Yeah google will no longer return results for those searchers who are signed into the google account because of the way the search term is processed for those visitors (SSL is now the default). Thus that 25% (or so) you are seeing that is "not provided" are people who are signed into a google account. Like some other user said this was done a couple months back.