Google HTTPS Search Results for Logged-In Users

I saw this post today on Google switching to HTTPS search results, referred from my trusty Slashdot.

Obviously, I didn’t like it – mostly because, from a website owner perspective, it eliminates the ability to get real-time reporting on keywords, which makes response to media events and such where mass keyword-driven traffic to your site all of the sudden requires proper response & content.

Curious as to whether sites would show up as “no referrer” (i.e. with referrer data totally stripped out) or if they’d show up redirected like Google+ links, I did some tests.  They do show up with a Google referrer – just one that has the search keywords obfuscated:

Clicking through a link from HTTPS Google:

I searched for “These Terrible Twos Aren’t Too Terrible“, clicked on the top link which is from my parenting site.

The log line I get resulting from this click through is:

4.2.2.2 - - [19/Oct/2011:11:26:48 -0500] "GET /these-terrible-twos-arent-too-terrible/ HTTP/1.1" 200 66517 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved= 0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientologyparent.com%2Fthese-terrible-twos-arent-too- terrible%2F&ei=OfqeTpH2B4Pi0QHBoI2SCQ&usg=AFQjCNHBqTWXZLEY0uBUia1-l7RegVujXA" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.202 Safari/535.1"

It obviously then obfuscates the search terms, but still at least tells you it was a Google organic result.  I’ve yet to see how Google plans to deliver these 30-day Keyword digests, but now that will obviously become another staple of daily analytics.

Update:

Curious as to how the rest of Google & Facebook services handle HTTPS links, I ran the same test on HTTPS Gmail, Google+ and Facebook.  Results:

Clicking through a link from HTTPS Gmail:

4.2.2.2 - - [19/Oct/2011:12:01:21 -0500] "GET /these-terrible-twos-arent-too-terrible/ 
HTTP/1.1" 200 66517 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.202 Safari/535.1"

Clicking through a link from HTTPS Google+:

4.2.2.2 - - [19/Oct/2011:12:01:21 -0500] "GET /these-terrible-twos-arent-too-terrible/ 
HTTP/1.1" 200 66517 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.202 Safari/535.1"

I had earlier done some tests on Google+ HTTPS, and clicking through links in G+ would send you to an intermediate HTTP page which then would send you on to the target link.  This way, one could at least tell if traffic was coming to your site from Google+.  It seems they’ve done away with that, which is unfortunate.  I haven’t seen any traffic appear in my stats from Google+ since shortly after launch — I always attributed that to low takeup on G+ compared to my followings on Facebook & such, but now it appears that it’s simply because the referring info was stripped out.

Clicking through a link from HTTPS Facebook:

4.2.2.2 - - [19/Oct/2011:12:02:33 -0500] "GET /these-terrible-twos-arent-too-terrible/ 
HTTP/1.1" 200 66517 "http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientologyparent.com%2F
these-terrible-twos-arent-too-terrible%2F&h=tAQA11y3eAQBsxDhnT7lzULhrGsW4OkAZv30JIUOUOuUTlA" 
"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.202 Safari/535.1"

Facebook is the only other service that actually redirects you to an intermediate HTTP page that at least discloses where the traffic came from.

 

Google +1 Button Doesn’t Get You Crawled

I was doing some testing this morning with the new Google +1 button.   One of my first tests was to see if Google immediately did anything with a +1 vote, and oddly, the answer is no.

As a test, I used my forum on the Scientology Parent site.  I already know that when I make a new forum post, nobody spiders the article until I do something to make the article get seen.

I then pressed a +1 button that I just added to the article.   No effect at all.

I then posted the article to Twitter via a bit.ly link.  Not surprisingly, that immediately resulted in no less than 13 different bots crawling the article before the first real user hit it.  Only then did Google’s spider crawl the link.

Curious.  Just a note.  I know they say that you don’t get crawled any faster with the +1 button, but just wanted to check.

 

Flickr Counts Hits from Robots?

This is sort of a placeholder post while I do some research on the matter.  I was looking into why it was that whenever I post something to Flickr and then Tweet about it, there are almost INSTANTLY 7 views of the photo.

I assumed that maybe some people have itchy trigger fingers on Twitter, but it’s too consistent.  So, before sharing on Facebook or anything, I posted one post to my ScientologyParent blog, and then stuck a link on it from Twitter.  Immediately, I saw the following:

38.113.234.180 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:45:29 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 55856 “-” “Voyager/1.0″67.195.112.244 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:45:32 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 55815 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)”216.52.242.14 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:45:45 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 55856 “-” “LinkedInBot/1.0 (compatible; Mozilla/5.0; Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/3.1 +http://www.linkedin.com)”74.112.131.175 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:46:03 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 55813 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Butterfly/1.0; +http://labs.topsy.com/butterfly/) Gecko/2009032608 Firefox/3.0.8″184.72.46.156 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:46:09 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 55815 “-” “RockMelt”74.112.131.176 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:46:11 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 55813 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Butterfly/1.0; +http://labs.topsy.com/butterfly/) Gecko/2009032608 Firefox/3.0.8″174.37.205.92 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:46:43 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 55854 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.19; aggregator:Spinn3r (Spinn3r 3.1); http://spinn3r.com/robot) Gecko/2010040121 Firefox/3.0.19″174.37.205.92 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:46:44 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/feed/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 1388 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.19; aggregator:Spinn3r (Spinn3r 3.1); http://spinn3r.com/robot) Gecko/2010040121 Firefox/3.0.19″174.37.205.92 – - [12/Apr/2011:12:46:45 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/feed/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 1388 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.19; aggregator:Spinn3r (Spinn3r 3.1); http://spinn3r.com/robot) Gecko/2010040121 Firefox/3.0.19″

That’s 7 different bots that hit the page immediately:

• Voyager
• Yahoo! Slurp
• LinkedInBot
• Butterfly
• Rockmelt
• Butterfly (again)
• Spinn3r

Looks like Flickr is counting these pulls as valid views, but not sure yet, as in that same period of time, I only saw two valid browser requests.  Like I said – putting the results here so I don’t forget about it.

WordPress Comments Marked as “rel=external nofollow” – SEO Impact?

I just noticed that WordPress comments are marked as “rel=external nofollow”.  I got curious as to what that meant for SEO, as a tactic for SEO’s (and for spammers) has commonly been to deluge blogs with comments, hoping to thereby increase link popularity.

The best explanation I’ve found for this is on the Microformats Wiki, which explains the subtle differences between “nofollow”, “external” and the other “rel=” attributes.

In terms of what actual value and/or impact this would then have on the SEO value of comments in blogs, this is another one that’s a bit up to speculation.

One can first-off point out that an “external nofollow” tag would thereby mean that a link is meant to be marked as an external link that should not be followed and cataloged by any search engine.

However, there’s been rumblings all over the net that Yahoo! and Bing don’t give a damn about nofollow links, and index them anyhow.

So, unless you’re in the know and actually work for one of these search giants, chances are you’re going to have to rely on making your decision the old-hat SEO way – by empirical observation – and then determine what the impact really is.