Google is tagging me with sa=X at the end of URL

What's up with this?

[gdguide]

Hey,

Sorry if this has been brought up. I'm getting a few #1 listings where G is actually listing 3-4 internal links to my site under one listing. The sublisitings, when I click on them, is showing

sa=X

at the end of the URL. What is this? Are they actually tracking who is clicking on those, or what?

Brian

[tedster]

You can see the same thing by searching on the term [webmasterworld] and then clicking on one of the four extended listings. I'm a little bugged by it -- sure hope they don't forget that THEY invented the url and it's not duplcate content.

They don't need to leave the query string on the url to track the click, because those extended listings are first going through a google.com address.

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/?sa=X&oi=smap&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1

I wonder if this is a bug and they intended to strip the entire query string.

[iLjAVA]

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/?sa=X&oi=smap&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1

Nothing strange for me here, just Google tracks clicks to extended listings to check if they are reasonable or to determine the better order or link text for them. Even if clicks go first through Google, parameters are left for easier and deeper tracking.

Here is my guess for parameters meaning:
1) sa=X - extended listings (usual tracking links in SERP have sa=t)
2) oi=smap - may be some connection to Sitemaps
3) resnum=1 - position in SERP
4) ct=result
5) cd=1 - position of internal link among other internal links in extended listings

[tedster]

What is strange is that after Google processes the click through their tracking script, they then ask the website's server to GET this url:
[webmasterworld.com...]

...instead of this:
[webmasterworld.com...]