[Admin]

Today Google pushed out Javascript Search Results to me, and this is while "not" logged in to a Google account. So it appears it's moving from isolated testing out in to the mainstream for all users.

If you are not sure what the Javascript search results are all about, well previously when you performed a search for the keyword "test" the results were delivered on the following URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=test&btnG=Google+Search

This is it's own page, then when a user clicks on a search result the keyword parameter is passed to the website so statistics packages know what keywords users arrive from.

However now, performing the same search will result in a URL such as:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=test&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=test&fp=_rpp-4zAm3I

Notice the # symbol after Google.com? Browsers ignore everything after that pound symbol so on that URL your browser will still "think" you are on plain old Google.com and for instance the toolbar Pagerank will be PR10 on search results pages.

What Google are doing to pass referrers is using a "Gateway URL" which will pass the following to stats programs:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fw ww.test.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=test&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

Unfortunately with the change the Firefox plugin SEOQuake is completely broken, and so is Google Enhancer which adds useful features to Google such as numbering of results, quick drop-down for date based search and filetype search all of which i use extensively.

I rely on SEOQuake "heavily" when performing non-webmaster searches because it gives a ton of valuable info about a domain before i click on it. I simply can't rely on Google to not return spam, and a nicely written page title/description isn't enough to assess quality. I've got many non-webmasters hooked on SEOQuake, and these are people who have never so much as built a MySpace page and they also agree they couldn't live without it.

So on that note Google, i have to bid you farewell as my default search engine and Yahoo takes it's place as my home page. When it comes to a fraction of a second faster results, or having a ton of useful information to make decisions i have to take the latter.