Google Changes Search Referrer Strings – Possible Issues For Analytics Providers

This week (14th Tuesday  2009), Google announced upcoming changes to the search referrer strings they display when people conduct a search.  This new referring url format will not affect Google Analytics, but other analytic software packages due to the way they record referral data.

You need to be aware of this in case your analytics vendor has not made the appropriate changes to their software which means that referral data will not be reported upon correctly.

The old referrer string looked like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

The new referrer string looks like this:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

You’ll see that the new referrer string contains /url? rather than /search?.  These changes are being rolled out slowly so right now you can still view the existing /search? search query strings, however they will gradually be removed.

Speculation Is Never Far Away…

There is some speculation that the some of the numbers in the new referrer string provides information around where the keyword was ranking at the time of the click.  Patrick Altoft has deducted the following:

cd=7 (click detail = 7th) – could be the ranking?
ct=res (click through = results) – could indicate that the click came from organic search

This could be true, but let’s wait for official news and further testing.

Others, such as Alex Chitu thinks that this could be a precursor to rolling out AJAX based search results which means that the keywords within the query string may not be present.  This would definitely break keyword tracking within a myriad of analytic packages.

The new search result strings would look like this:

http://www.google.com/#q=flowers

Unfortunately web browsers do not pass on any data after the #, so search terms and other parameters will not be passed on.  This means that the referrer would be seen as simply Google.com.  This would cause such uproar in the search marketing industry with Google certainly displaying monopolistic behaviour.

Google however explains that the AJAX-enhanced pages could make search engine result pages faster and smoother for users.  A test was carried out in March 09 of which affected approximately 1% of searches.  Some sites such as Get Clicky have already seen an uplift of Google.com search referrals without the keyword parameter showing.

Let’s hope that Google sticks with the /url? query strings and not /#q ones.