An hour or so before I went offline for Passover, the Google Analytics blog announced a very significant change to how Google search will be passing along referral data. In the past, a search for flowers and a click on that search result to your site, would show the URL:

Now, you will see the referral string (in some cases, right now in beta):

The new format is broken down as such:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t

&source=web

&ct=res

&cd=7

&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm

&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j

&q=flowers

&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w

&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed on a BlogStorm blog post that Google may be passing along Google ranking data, along with this information.

Brett Crosby, the man behind Google Analytics, summed it up:

The folks at WebmasterWorld suspect this change is more about Google eventually migrating to AJAX search results, amongst other things.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.