Pfui - 11:58 pm on Jan 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

This just in: Google Web Preview (GWP) hits include a referrer -- sort of:

http://www.google.com/search
(no trailing slash)

On my largest site:

74.125.78.89
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/534.51 (KHTML, like Gecko; Google Web Preview) Chrome/12.0.742 Safari/534.51

17:54:03 /dir/filename.html

robots.txt? NO (never)
REF? http://www.google.com/search (never before)

Yesterday, I saw it. Today, I tested it and every time I requested a SERP preview, the hit to the page always showed it. Image hits do not; they show site pages as referrers.

(Aside: Another GWP change occurred along the way; I forget when. In SERPs, G changed the little magnifying glass icon to a big rectangular hoverbutton showing only >>. As with the old icon, click on the >> and the Previews appear, if available. Click again and they're gone.)

Okay. Back to the new /search referrer:

- It doesn't include ANY parameters, but clicks-thru from Previews do.
- ALL GWP hits to .html files show it -- so are they really in real time?

Anyone else seeing "http://www.google.com/search" in their logs? If not, SERP your domain, >> a few Previews, and see if GWP shows up and shows it.