tedster - 5:06 pm on May 11, 2008 (gmt 0)

Interesting find, Andy. I haven't been able to pin this one down yet - mostly because it is so hard to duplicate. I only managed to get one page so far (using Firefox) that included the parameter 'hs=' in the links.

Hoping these observations help -

1. the page used two different 3-letter values for the paramater

2. 12 of the occurances used one value as part of the rgular Google interface (links for Images, News, Advanced Search, etc)

3. The other value for the 'hs' parameter appeared 26 times on the page: in the ten "1, 2, 3... Next" links at the bottom and in sixteen "similar pages" and "cached" links.

I've tried to generate a second example by turning off cookies, turning off the cache, using the toolbar for the search, using the "Google Search" button and using "Enter" on the keyboard. So far I can't generate a second instance to study. But I did see it once, on the first try.

Not sure this means anything, but I noticed that the 'hs' parameter did NOT appear in the status bar when I hovered over those links, even though other parameters in the url, such as 'hl', did. Seems like some javascript is changing the status bar display.