Upcoming Change to Google.com search referral url

Google has announced that it is bringing up some change in its Google search url's which you may see soon this week. However they said that this is not going to have any affect on the Google Analytics results.

So soon we are going to see a new referral URL format for the visitors who are going to come from the Google Search results pages. Until now we could see that search on Google for the term "flowers" would be looking something like this:

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

But, due to this new change you are going to see a string something 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

The notable difference among these two url structures is that instead of "/search?" the URL contains a "/url?".

This new change will occur only in a small percentage of searches initially. But, it is expected that we can see the old and new forms of the URLs as this change gradually rolls out.

Note: If you are using UTM-based tracking with Urchin Software, you need to stay tuned for a software update that Google will be making available soon. However, if you are using IP-Useragent based tracking with Urchin you are not going to be affected since this form of tracking can effectively process both current and new referral strings.
Add Post To: |Digg| Twitthis| Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon| Sphinn| Reddit| BlinkList| Furl| Spurl| Yahoo| Simpy|