An Easy Way To Check What Referrer Data Google, Bing Or Yahoo Pass To Your Secure Site

Three major search engines migrating their default searches to secure search, over SSL/HTTPS, marketers and webmasters want to know what referrer and analytics data will be passed to them and what won’t. The majority of  Google is Secure search, Yahoo yesterday defaulted all searches to be conducted over SSL, and Bing is currently testing SSL search for those who opt in. As you see, the tool is on an HTTPS page, so referrer data can securely pass from a secure Google, Bing or Yahoo URL but do they? As I write this, Google shows it on the first page, towards the middle of the results. Bing and Yahoo have yet to index it but it will soon.

Testing Referrer Data From HTTPS Search To HTTP URL

The default protocol for passing referrer from an HTTPS URL to a non HTTPS URL is to not pass any referrer data at all. Both Yahoo and Bing comply with that, while Google passed google.com as the referrer in this case. How do I know? I tested it by searching Google, Yahoo and Bing for [what is my referrer] and then clicked on the www.whatismyreferer.com listing.

You see the listing in the search engine:

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Milan Tomic

Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.

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