A thread started today by Barry Welford of Strategic Marketing Montreal asked if Google tracks URL clicks in SERPs.

We always knew that Yahoo! sends clicks through a redirection script, and even asks that developers using its API actually use the redirection URL. Their API FAQ states this very nicely:

Q: While using the Yahoo! Search APIs, what's the difference between a "click URL" and "display URL"?

Our services often provide two URLs for each result. The "display URL" leads directly to the site or resource in question. It's suitable for display in an application. The "click URL" is longer and contains extra information that helps us to optimize our search services.

Please use the click URL when sending users to a site as the result of using our services. For example, <a href="$clickUrl">$displayUrl</a>

So what about Google?

We already know that GMail tracks URL clicks, and I pointed that out in my reply to Barry, so that's one service. Digging around in the Google search results, I couldn't find any evidence of tracking. I was using the LiveHTTPHeaders Firefox extension, and it was very clear that a click in the results was directly transfered to the target website. Javascript was turned on.

Then it occurred to me to turn on search personalization. Immediately, I found the tracking by searching for [google] and clicking on the Google Maps result. The status bar said the URL is http://maps.google.com/. The tracking headers look like this:

So that's how it's done: a 302 redirect using Javascript click capture. It makes sense to track clicks as a means of personalization, but that doesn't mean personalization is all pure and holy as Google makes it out to be.

Please join the thread at Cre8asite forums.

Technorati Tags: Google, personalization