
Upcoming changes in Google’s HTTP Referrer - cleverjake
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/upcoming-changes-in-googles-http.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FamDG+%28Official+Google+Webmaster+Central+Blog%29
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ck2
Why on earth are people still allowing their referers to be sent to third
party websites?

It should be the first thing you disable.

If a site insists on referers use an automatic spoofing plugin like
RefControl.

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untog
_Why on earth are people still allowing their referers to be sent to third
party websites?_

Because they don't care? You might consider it a privacy must but plenty
don't. I, for one, don't have a huge problem with sites knowing where I came
from.

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parfe
I recommend anyone interested in learning about online tracking to install
Mozilla Collusion <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/collusion/> After seeing the
amount of seemingly disparate information certain organizations can track
(Google/Doubeclick, Discuss, Facebook, Twitter, etc) consider installing
Ghostery <http://www.ghostery.com/>

Collusion takes seconds to install and you can forget about it for months
while it builds an interactive web of tracking.

Ghostery protects your privacy by blocking a large list of web spies.

~~~
coderdude
I've checked this out. It was pretty crazy to see how many domains get pinged
when I visit a site.

Just remember, o consumer of things but blocker of ads yet payer of nothing,
that when enough people are gyping site owners out of what little revenue you
even _can_ earn from advertising you will cease to get your freebies but the
agencies will not stop gathering your information.

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AznHisoka
Anyone know why Google doesn't show the referrer if you're logged in and it's
organic result, but they do show it if they click on Adwords?

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gojomo
AdWords customers paid to get it.

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craze3
For those with SEO concerns:

"This change will only affect the subset of SSL search referrers which already
didn’t include the query terms. Non-HTTPS referrals will continue to behave as
they do today."

Scrape away my friends, scrape away.

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gcb
The refereer header is So important for google that

1) they actively removed 4 attempts to disable it chromium (the open source
project, not their build of chrome)

2) they are now eliminating competition on their new analytics market by
monopolizing it

