AOL referral strings don't include keywords

Why do any search engines do this?

[gomblue]

I can't track certain aol.com searches because the keywords are hidden in the referral striing.

What do others feel about this?

Thank you

The URL is similar to: [aolsearch.aol.com...]

[gomblue]

Are there any other search engines that hide the search term?

Will directories ever change so that I can track search term with them? (They don't have a query variable).

[larryn]

AOL is responding to spyware that hijacks queries by encoding the query - its an unfortunate byproduct of whats happened to the web.

I doubt that they will provide decoders for their encoding, as they would most likely be abused in the future.