Comments on: Google’s tracking links – grrrrrrrrr!

By: ARXL

ARXL — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 23:08:54 +0000

Foxy neutralizes click tracking for major search engines: http://www.2-power-n.com.

By: matthewmurcia

matthewmurcia — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 12:21:54 +0000

Interesting quote about switching search engines. :-) I subscribe to an interesting business quotes newsletter from a site called woopidoo and curiously today they mailed me one from Sergey Brin himself related to this very topic:

“Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan.
But if they think Google is too powerful, remember
that with search engines unlike other companies,
all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.”

I switched my default search engine to yahoo the other day. I think this will get more interesting in the next 6 months or so.

By: DanThies

DanThies — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 00:17:22 +0000

I’m not talking about personalized search, I’m talking about tracking links that are being inserted for some listings in some search results on google.com.

Anonymously, leaving aside the fact that the implementation is part of what I’m talking about, I’d still love to hear your thoughts on how this feature benefits users at all.

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 20:20:57 +0000

There is the option to turn personalized search off: google psearch help

By: Anonymously

Anonymously — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:09:45 +0000

Dan- I was referring to “if you’re going to implement a feature that does nothing for users” – not to issues with the implemention of the feature.

By: DanThies

DanThies — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 14:21:04 +0000

Anonymous… I’m sure we’re all open to your ideas about how a redirect script that breaks frequently is better for users than a direct link.

By: Anonymously

Anonymously — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:15:43 +0000

Dan – I’m a bit mystified by your claim that Google tracking clicks does not benefit its users…

By: Weirdan

Weirdan — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 09:44:56 +0000

Link tracking seems to be a part of their “personalized search” feature.

By: mmj

mmj — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 01:03:34 +0000

Google’s redirects were annoying me when I wanted to ‘right click, copy link location’ on them. It makes using Google to find links a fair bit harder for me – I find that I often use Google to find links to sites, without visiting sites.