Current Events > Q for programmers: How does the owner of a website track what you google?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Let's say you own gamefaqs..

Everytime I google "whatever" plus the word "gamefaqs" , does the owner of the website actually reads what you searched for?

Or is it basically just encrypted data that automatically gets saved but not read and just used to feed you the same type of things you searched for in the future?

There's different ways. If you're coming from Google the most common way is in the query string.

You know how you might see some urls that are like blablah.com/blah?fbclid=fh4dyd5vfu7fjerh8vfat==&ref=google or something similar?

That's tracking where you came from and what you did to get where you are.

You can basically delete the stuff after the ? If you know what to look for.

tracking cookies

What I am asking is does the person who owns a website actually see anything a person searches for if they include the name of the website in their search.

If yes, how? Like do they get like a list with aaall the searches people have made?

Vhagar995 posted...

What I am asking is does the person who owns a website actually see anything a person searches for if they include the name of the website in their search.

No, because you're not actually accessing the website. And even then, they couldn't see what you're searching.

Vhagar995 posted...

What I am asking is does the person who owns a website actually see anything a person searches for if they include the name of the website in their search.

If yes, how? Like do they get like a list with aaall the searches people have made?

Oh. That's information contained in Google analytics if you use it. If you don't, you have no way of knowing what they searched.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Oh. That's information contained in Google analytics if you use it. If you don't, you have no way of knowing what they searched.

So if the owner of the website has "google analytics" he can literally see what people google about his website?

Vhagar995 posted...

So if the owner of the website has "google analytics" he can literally see what people google about his website?

It's been a super long time since I've had access to a website that used Google analytics and Google has dramatically changed how they parse searches and use SEO to deliver your website as a result but that information was available once upon a time. I don't know if it still is.

Tyranthraxus posted...

It's been a super long time since I've had access to a website that used Google analytics and Google has dramatically changed how they parse searches and use SEO to deliver your website as a result but that information was available once upon a time. I don't know if it still is.

Do you think you tell me what this means basically? It's their "privacy" message.

Your information is collected via two ways. Firstly, by browsing this site will cause the phpBB software to create a number of cookies, which are small text files that are downloaded on to your computers web browser temporary files. The first two cookies just contain a user identifier (hereinafter user-id) and an anonymous session identifier (hereinafter session-id), automatically assigned to you by the phpBB software. A third cookie will be created once you have browsed topics within This site and is used to store which topics have been read, thereby improving your user experience.

We may also create cookies external to the phpBB software whilst browsing this site, though these are outside the scope of this document which is intended to only cover the pages created by the phpBB software. The second way in which we collect your information is by what you submit to us.

the parts that I bolded are the ones that sound like the owners on the site can see what you googled, as long as you typed the site's name

utm_keyword is the go-to.

Questionmarktarius posted...

utm_keyword is the go-to.

Go to for what

Vhagar995 posted...

Go to for what

if someone goes to your website via google, utm_keyword may be in the querystring on first arrival.
php has it in the $_GET and $_REQUEST globals, and other backends are similar. However, you have to capture it immediately or it's lost on the first internal link.

The bolded parts are basically saying:

Cookie1 is for you as an individual on the site, to help track traffic and see how many users at any given time are on your site.

Cookie2 is used to see WHEN you use the site, to understand how often you use the site, and when surges of users are on the site.

Cookie3 is used to log key strokes on the site, and where/what you click. This is used to determine what users are there for, and to tell which ads are useful, and which aren't (how often ads are clicked, which ones, etc) and are often sold off so other sites (like google) and create an algorithm to determine what you do next.

Nothing there is anything to do with Google, unless (as @Tyranthraxus said) is has that weird ending to it that is used to tell the site how the website was located.

3rd-party are entirely unreliable now and may not exist.
But now I have to ask, why do you need to know that?

Lokison posted...

Nothing there is anything to do with Google, unless (as @Tyranthraxus said) is has that weird ending to it that is used to tell the site how the website was located

Ohhhh. I don't why but the phrase "by browsing this site" is what sounded to me like they meant "searching on google the site's name" .

That's why it seemed odd

http request referrer or similar GET (or maybe POST) based params
or malware

Questionmarktarius posted...

if someone goes to your website via google, utm_keyword may be in the querystring on first arrival.
php has it in the $_GET and $_REQUEST globals, and other backends are similar. However, you have to capture it immediately or it's lost on the first internal link.

Im sorry i dont understand any of that , I dont know anything about programming language
Questionmarktarius posted...

But now I have to ask, why do you need to know that?

Basically it stood out to me that they would know what you googled and I found it weird that's why I wanted to ask to someone who knows better

TheMikh posted...

http request referrer or similar GET (or maybe POST) based params
or malware

Sorry what does that mean?

Vhagar995 posted...

Basically it stood out to me that they would know what you googled and I found it weird that's why I wanted to ask to someone who knows better

Where is this coming from? Curiosity? Paranoia?

Vhagar995 posted...

Sorry what does that mean?

been a little while since i've done webdev, but basically when you click a link, it makes a request to the server the link points to and passes certain "header" data as part of that request, including "referrer" which is the page/site it came from.

GET params refer to the fields in the URL, which also pass along information to the server.

POST params are processed in a similar manner to GET params by the server under the hood, but instead of being passed by URL, they're are passed by way of form submissions or AJAX requests.

and well, malware - whether in your system or in browser extensions - can track your browsing activity.

TheMikh posted...

been a little while since i've done webdev, but basically when you click a link, it makes a request to the server the link points to and passes certain "header" data as part of that request, including "referrer" which is the page/site it came from.

HTTP "referer" header (yes, it's spelled wrong) does still technically exist, but it's unreliable and almost always absent.

Questionmarktarius posted...

HTTP "referer" header (yes, it's spelled wrong) does still technically exist, but it's unreliable and almost always absent.

yeah, i haven't really seen it in active use since the 2000s. basically gone the way of <marquee></marquee>.

at my last job in ecommerce we tended to use js pixels issued by different cross-site tracking/marketing services, as well as google and facebook. no idea how the services worked on the marketing department's side of things.

TheMikh posted...

GET params refer to the fields in the URL, which also pass along information to the server.

POST params are processed in a similar manner to GET params by the server under the hood, but instead of being passed by URL, they're are passed by way of form submissions or AJAX requests.

This is not accurate. GET and POST are known as verbs that indicate what kind of action a user is trying to take to a web app. Both of these can accept and process params from forms or query string.

In a non RESTful environment, everything is considered a POST.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Google is literally my ISP. I probably have three hundred death sentences by now.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Google is literally my ISP. I probably have three hundred death sentences by now.

Google being your ISP is probably better overall because they already know what websites you visit and the resource you accessed if you access them through Google.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Google being your ISP is probably better overall because they already know what websites you visit and the resource you accessed if you access them through Google.

Ultra-paranoid tracking lockdown.
Yet... Google is my ISP and email.

goddammit.

Tyranthraxus posted...

This is not accurate. GET and POST are known as verbs that indicate what kind of action a user is trying to take to a web app. Both of these can accept and process params from forms or query string.

In a non RESTful environment, everything is considered a POST.

i guess come from a bit of a naive lamp development bias, wherein GET and POST are segmented but handled the same way on the server side. but yeah, forms can be submitted/processed as GET and non-forms can be submitted/processed as POST. less common, but doable.

TheMikh posted...

been a little while since i've done webdev, but basically when you click a link, it makes a request to the server the link points to and passes certain "header" data as part of that request, including "referrer" which is the page/site it came from.

GET params refer to the fields in the URL, which also pass along information to the server.

POST params are processed in a similar manner to GET params by the server under the hood, but instead of being passed by URL, they're are passed by way of form submissions or AJAX requests.

and well, malware - whether in your system or in browser extensions - can track your browsing activity.

So bottomline , a website doesn't actually get a list of everything people search about it anywhere outside of it ?

Vhagar995 posted...

So bottomline , a website doesn't actually get a list of everything people search about it anywhere outside of it ?

not unless the data is made available to them somehow

Simple, the site has access to your data and site visitors have access to who advertises here