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Let's do a Google search for "Caves of Narshe"!

http://www.google.com/search?q=caves+of+narshe

Now let's right-click and copy the URL to CoN!

http:/ /www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cavesofnarshe.com%2F&rct=j&q=caves%20of%20narshe&ei=hyF8TNe8F8GblgeXvKjsCw&usg=AFQjCNH8rN5pCmRU-gpvIiQ4vJ-knt_Lyw&cad=rja

(I put a space in the URL so it wouldn't auto-link itself. Pretend it isn't there.)

...wait, WTF???

Okay, seriously, what is this? This happens every time I try to copy/paste links from Google searches. Even a link to Google itself when I search for "google".

They even make it so that the "correct" URL shows up when you mouse over the search result link. They even go that far. But when you right-click...you realize it's a gigantic URL starting wth http:/ /www.google.com/blahblahblah.

Why does it do this? Is there a way to circumvent this?

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 30th August 2010 21:30

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Woah! That's just weird. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue what's going on.

I believe this has something to do with hyperlinks.

Got to CoN's main page, and hover over the button that lets you log out. It will have a long code. At the end, it will have this.

return=http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/

Basically, the rest of the code is to log your account out, and that part is to return you to CoN after that task has been done. If I were you, I would open Caves of Narshe in a new tab, and copy from the address bar.

Edit

Of course, I'm sure the guy that actually has a website will know better than I, lol.

This post has been edited by BlitzSage on 31st August 2010 00:20

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Praise Be To Helix!

I doubt anyone really knows why it's done. I'm also not quite sure why it's a huge deal when at worst you can click through to the site and then copy the URL from there.

However, here are my hunches.

As to why they do it, I will all but guarantee that they do it for tracking purposes. That string looks to me like some stuff that is hashed, and I don't doubt something in their version of their own analytics package can turn that into useful information about who's clicking what under what search terms. Giving that up would likely cost them the data that they use to (allegedly) continue improving upon their search data and algorithms.

In terms of what you might be able to do about it, turn off javascript. That URL seems to be written to the page via some funky JS, but when I turn off JS the copied URL seems okay to me. Failing that, see if anyone has written a plugin for your browser of choice to do it, or perhaps a Greasemonkey or GreaseKit script.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Let's break it down:

http:/ /www.google.com/url?

This part means it's directing it to google's index page for re-routing. The question mark means variables are to follow.

sa=t

this seems to have something to do with the fact that it's a regular listing, not a paid one or other type of listing

source=web

this probably means it's coming from outside of google's search domain (for example for the link at the top that sometimes appears to direct you to related news will have 'source=univ' instead

cd=1

this says it's the number 1 result of page number 1. The first result on the next page will be cd=11, and the second on the third page will be cd=22

ved=0CBIQFjAA

looks like some sort of nonal-decimal (is that how you say nine?) number.

url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cavesofnarshe.com%2F&rct=j&q=caves%20of%20narshe

simply the url with special characters (punctuation, spaces) encoded with the standard url encoding

ei=hyF8TNe8F8GblgeXvKjsCw

seems to be a sort of page signature, as it's the same for all links on a search page.

usg=AFQjCNH8rN5pCmRU-gpvIiQ4vJ-knt_Lyw

I think this stands for 'unique signature', as it's unique for each link

cad=rja

out of time, gotta go to bed, sorry

Edit: oops accidentally skipped rct=j and q=caves%20of%20narshe. The latter's the search query. Now I'm going to bed for real this time, lol

This post has been edited by finalalias on 31st August 2010 14:02

Quote (Rangers51 @ 30th August 2010 21:19)

I doubt anyone really knows why it's done. I'm also not quite sure why it's a huge deal when at worst you can click through to the site and then copy the URL from there.

However, here are my hunches.

As to why they do it, I will all but guarantee that they do it for tracking purposes. That string looks to me like some stuff that is hashed, and I don't doubt something in their version of their own analytics package can turn that into useful information about who's clicking what under what search terms. Giving that up would likely cost them the data that they use to (allegedly) continue improving upon their search data and algorithms.

In terms of what you might be able to do about it, turn off javascript. That URL seems to be written to the page via some funky JS, but when I turn off JS the copied URL seems okay to me. Failing that, see if anyone has written a plugin for your browser of choice to do it, or perhaps a Greasemonkey or GreaseKit script.

1. Well, the Google programmers obviously know.
2. That's what I figured; it had to do with search tracking.
3. I'll try that later and post the results.

To be honest, it's not that big of a problem; the only problem is that I have to actually click through to the page; if there's some reason I don't want to click it (and there are assorted reasons, though uncommon) I will have to, and still can, just copy/paste the web page address shown below the search result.

I'm just a bit more bugged by its actually fooling me by even changing the mouse-over URL, as well as curious as to why they do it and how it works.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 1st September 2010 16:30

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Meh....
I stopped using Google a long time ago, buddy.
So to be honest I don't care for it any more.

Quote (NeoEx-Death @ 18th September 2010 18:18)

Meh....
I stopped using Google a long time ago, buddy.
So to be honest I don't care for it any more.

Way to bump the topic for that. Enjoy your search engine of choice!

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?