‘Eliminate the problem of all references’ with Mobile Safari

Typically, when you click from one web page to another, the web browser sends “referral” information and reports the URL of the page you clicked from to get to the new page. For example, if you do a Google search for “digital cameras” and click on naaptol.com in the list that appears, Naaptol might tell you that you reached the page through a Google search for digital cameras. This is because the reference, or “Caller ID for the web” as it is sometimes called, usually contains the information you were looking for.

“Dark Google”

In 2011, Google made a switch to SSL search by encrypting searches made by users using Google.com over a secure connection. Google explained that it was a measure to protect the personalized search results it offers. But it affected publishers: The sites that people go to by clicking a search result on the Google page would no longer receive “referral” data revealing the query terms those visitors searched to get to your site. . The only exception was in the case of advertisements. Publishers have become familiar with “Not Provided” – All traffic with retained search terms typically appears as with the Google Analytics keyword “not provided”. Industry watchers and SEO experts called these developments “Dark Google” and wondered if it would be the end of Google Analytics.

Apple’s IOS 6 changes Google search impacts on Safari Mobile

Then, last September, Apple made a change to iOS 6 that affected Google search from Safari. And Google was not prepared for this. Users who search Google with Safari on iOS 6 would appear to publishers as “direct” traffic rather than “search” traffic. Now search engine marketer Danny Sullivan says he has found the reason why Safari’s mobile search engines appear to be direct traffic rather than traffic through Google search.

Google created the referrer meta tag last March so that information would be passed to their browsers through the referrer meta tag rather than through their web server. So the page has embedded reference data. Mobile Safari does not support the “referral meta” tag and this is why it makes website visitors look more like “direct” traffic than “search” traffic. Many other browsers also seem to have the “remove all references” problem. However, Desktop Safari is not affected as it supports the meta reference.

The result, Sullivan says, is that many publishers may see a drop in traffic that could be due to traffic not being properly attributed and not because search traffic has dropped. BuzzFeed reported that many leading publishers, including Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post, saw a drop in their Google traffic. Even Google’s traffic appears to have dropped lower than Facebook’s, and BuzzFeed says Google is only to blame.

The solution

Sullivan offers two solutions:

• Mobile Safari can support meta referral
• Google may resume the use of web server-based reports to pass information to browsers instead of reports based on referral meta tags. However, this could result in all references being removed if a user visits an unsafe site outside of Google’s protected search environment.

It would seem that the best option is for Mobile Safari to support the meta reference. Otherwise, search engine optimization companies may find that Google Analytics or other analytics programs do not report SEO trends accurately.