Google Secure Search

by Jonathan Kay on Wednesday, 2nd June, 2010

I’ve read a few blogs and Tweets recently about Google’s new Beta which allows people to search using SSL.

This is great news if you want to keep your search from prying eyes, perhaps you’re in an internet cafe or using a shared work computer, however it does have implications for a web analyst.

This is an extract of parameters being set on www.autotrader.co.uk when I start a session from clicking on an Auto Trader link on http://www.google.com; the search engine and keyword are in yellow.  (The web analytics tool is Omniture’s SiteCatalyst.)

This is an extract from a secure search for the same term on https://www.google.com.  You can see that there is no referrer data so I cannot report on the arrival’s source or search term.

More info on Google and SSL.

It will be interesting to see what take-up Google has for this.