Say goodbye to search analytics

Technical reason: Referers aren't sent when transitioning from an SSL page to a non-SSL page - to get the referer sent along, there would need to be an intermediate HTTP step and redirect, which would be slower, and would defeat the point of secure search.<p>Here is the bug in Chromium where this was added: <a href="http://crbug.com/29920" rel="nofollow">http://crbug.com/29920</a>

Proof that no matter what you do, <i>some</i> people will be unhappy about it.

Yes, this is a pain in the butt for webmasters, and yes, if Google arranged for only Google Analytics to display these search terms, it'd be an anticompetitive abuse of market power. But any webmaster's power ends at the limits of their site.<p>Really don't like people using encrypted search and not passing along search terms? Don't serve them the content they were looking for - explain the situation to them instead. Or pursue a milder approach where the content is displayed alongside a suggestion that they use an unencrypted search engine. That's about all the recourse you've legitimately got.

tl;dr: web analytics company starts claiming bullshit about privacy in search engines<p>Also, in other news: some people start claiming bullshit about issues than are better for other people but bad for them.<p>ps. I did upvote this post in HN just for the sake of discussion and comments, but I don't like the tone of the original poster with his 'HN hipsters' and 'BS' all around.

If Google Adsense still has access to this data to serve more relevant ads on the destination site and other ad providers don't then it is very anti-competitive.

Sour grapes.....<p>If what google wanted was to stop letting search terms show up in weblogs of sites they linked to, they could have done it plenty of other ways, cheaper and easier than rolling out SSL globally.... and they were never obligated to provide this to us in the first place.

So,basically, this threatens his business so he rants about it.<p>Fair enough be concerned for your business - but attacking DDG and Google for it is unlikely to win favours :P

So giving people the option to hide their searches from tyrannical regimes, snooping schools and overbearing corporate IT firms, let alone a kid with a copy of wireshark at a local café is evil? Grow up. It's in beta and will unlikely ever become the default due to the extra latency and server load. Ignore all that and seek for attention anyhow.

Two points of relevance:<p>1. Say I walk into a shop and they can't help me, so they suggest that I go another shop down the road. When I go into the second shop, I <i>always</i> tell them that the first sent me. It's not an invasion of privacy at all and I think it's common courtesy.<p>So I don't understand why a search engine referral to a website is any different.<p>What I do worry about is what the target website does in terms of behavioral tracking, which is a bit creepy. Merely transferring referral info and letting websites use that in aggregate so they can understand their traffic better is something is not that creepy.<p>2. Google Webmaster Tools recently started showing keyword ranking and traffic data. If you study the data they share in WMT vs Google Analytics, a few patterns emerge. In a way, they are taking away the data Analytics shows and then give it back in WM Tools. This is one area to keep an eye on.

What a pathetic overreaction. Google’s words: “[…] we’re gradually rolling out a new choice to search more securely […]”. Gradually. Choice. It’s beta. There is no indication that this will ever be the default.<p>It’s pretty clear to me that Google sees this as a feature for the tiny minority of people who care about such things.

I wonder if Google Analytics still manages to store the search data?

To be honest, I don't understand how using HTTPS in Google search will help users to browse web more securely. I am not going to use this feature. The bad thing is that lots of non-technical users who care about security and privacy will use it, and they'll get an illusion that their web surfing has become more secure.