Search Terms Now Being Encrypted By Google

The Web referrer logs of Belch.Com are now showing these typical stats below:

This is a result of Google encrypting their search terms for signed-in users, and it will have a lasting effect on all kinds of web services that rely on using search keywords and terms to understand what kinds of topics and content are driving traffic to a site. Google does this by providing the search results as normal to a logged-in user, but they replace the normal referrer line in the web request to a server with the “encrypted_search_terms” phrase. And yes, it violates the RFC for web referrals, but honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for this change to become a reality.

Google’s blog post here talks about this change. And you know, you can actually use this referrer term against them by using your website’s .htaccess file, a text based access control list, to redirect inbound connections with that referrer line to a specific site on your website, perhaps one with a known high clickrate for ads.

And I LOLed that everyone is searching for Anderson Cooper being gay. Gads, everyone knows he is, he should just come out of the closet already.