When you search for something and then click on a resulting link the website you land on is sent the information about where your search originated (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing…) and the search term that brought you to their site. Many sites use Google Analytics to automatically record and monitor this information. It can be a useful tool for knowing which search terms are working and which are not. But depending on the search it can also reveal who you are and what you’re searching for. You might not want that, and here is how to protect your searches from Google Analytics.
Here is an example of search terms that have brought people to this site recently.
Regular readers of this site won’t be surprised by 5 of these terms, though people searching for “crasstalk” rather than just using their address bar is mystifying. But the number one term “(not provided)” is something that shows up regularly for almost every Google Analytics user, those are people who have purposely or inadvertently figured out the secret. Those people are logged into a Google service like Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, Google+ or any other Google service at the time they do their search.
This came about because Google does not pass keywords for those visiting Google on an encrypted session. In recent years, anyone who is logged into a Google account is automatically using an encrypted session.
If you have a Google account of some kind, just log in. Then don’t log out and perform your search. This probably won’t be a change for many people, but for some this simple tweak to their browsing will prevent their search terms from being passed to the sites they visit.
