Buzz has been growing over the past 4-5 days about what appears to be a new Google search results test that, if widely implemented, might spell doom for
SEO rank checking software and some other tools. Many are concerned that it could kill web analytics software, too, but that may not be the case.
Google appears to be testing AJAX-based search results on a limited basis. Users who are able to access the test see different URLs for Google searches. Rather than the standard
www.google.com/search?q=keyword, URLs in the AJAX test use a hash mark, like this:
www.google.com/#q=keyword.
Michael VanDeMar
wrote about this test last week, and a commenter on that post points out that the test
was active in The Netherlands as far back as November.
What Does It Mean?
If Google rolls out AJAX-based search results on a wide scale, there could be some big ramifications. As Michael VanDeMar and the commenters on his post point out,
SEO rank checkers and other tools could be rendered useless. (Google would probably like to kill such rank checking software, as it has long viewed these tools as taking computing resources it would rather use for human visitors).
While some might not cry for those still stuck in the rank checking mentality of the past, a
post today from analytics software provider Clicky says it would also have dramatic impact on web analytics tools, those that measure activity from visitors who come to your web site:
“This change breaks search/keyword tracking for every single analytics app in existence…. the fact that Google is even considering doing this, with blatant disregard for the fact that they will be breaking every single analytics, stats, and log analyzer product on the planet, is just amazing.”
Both the Clicky post and
this one from Aaron Wall suggest Google may be setting up Google Analytics as the only software that will be able to track keyword referrals from AJAX-based search results. Says Aaron:
“…what happens to existing tools? Plugins? Rank checkers? Stats and other referral tracking packages? All tools that rely on Google passing data in order to work…. Perhaps the only place you’ll be able to get this data is Google Analytics? Is this the next step - a lock-in? It has happened before.”
But analytics tools might be able to account for a hash mark in URLs; it’s just that most of them don’t handle it right now. Nathan Buggia recently
wrote about URL fragments (the portion of a URL after a hash mark) on Jane and Robot. In that post, Avinash Kaushik — Google’s Analytics Evangelist — provides a javascript snippet that will allow tracking of URL fragments after the hash mark. If a short piece of Javascript is all it takes to track what comes after the hash mark, most analytics software providers should be able to update their software to accommodate a chance to AJAX-based search results. (see postscripts below)
We’ve contacted Google for an official confirmation of the AJAX-based test and a comment on its potential impacts, and will update this post if/when we hear back.
Postscript #1: Sean from Clicky, who authored the post we linked to above, has added some clarification for us.
“Yes, Javascript can be used to track the #hashmarks at the end of the URL. This isn’t the problem though. Javascript has a variable called “document.referrer” that contains the URL of the referrer for the page you are currently looking at. Web browsers don’t store the hash in this variable, so there is no way for us to get it.”
To clarify further, the javascript workaround mentioned in the Jane and Robot post only works to track URLs with hash marks on your own site; it doesn’t work to track hash marks from a referring page.
Postscript #2: A Google spokesperson shares this statement:
“We’re continually testing new interfaces and features to enhance the user experience. We are currently experimenting with a javascript enhanced result page because we believe that it may ultimately provide a faster experience for our users. At this time only a small percentage of users will see this experiment. It is not our intention to disrupt referrer tracking, and we are continuing to iterate on this project. For more information on the experiments that we run on Google search, please see: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/this-is-test-this-is-only-test.html.”
Google AJAX Search Results = Death To Search Term Tracking?
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