Google Toolbar Orig Parameter

Experimental?

[ciml]

I'm not sure if this is new or not, but my Toolbar today sent an 'orig' parameter.

/search?
client=navclient-auto - self explanatory
&googleip=O;216.239.57.100;625 - self explanatory
&ch=6228503481 - checksum to stop people harvesting PR data
&orig=http%3A%2F%2www%2eexample%2Ecom%2F - the previous page
&features=Rank - self explanatory
&q=info:http%3A%2F%2www%2eexample%2Eorg%2F - the page I'm visiting now

The interesting thing to me is that the 'orig' address does not link to the 'info' address, so the 'orig' parameter is the previous page not the referring page.

If this is, or becomes, common then it may give an indication to some interesting future uses for their data. I'm not sure why they don't just mine the information from their logs though (assuming that the Toolbar logs include cookie Ids).

I'd love a 'people who visit this page often visit these pages...' feature on the Toolbar one day.

[vitaplease]

Interesting Ciml, care to share where/how you get that info?

I'd love a 'people who visit this page often visit these pages...' feature on the Toolbar one day.

Me to - similar to Alexa's, for the moment, with current advanced toolbar use, it might be:
"webmasters who backlink hunted here also backlink hunted there" ;)

[ciml]

I thought this one would get your interest. :-)

I'd like to say the info came from some complex Google Toolbar reverse engineering scheme, but in reality our 'net connection's been slow and I've been watching TCP traffic to see what's eating my bandwidth.

The orig parameter just jumped out at me; I've only seen it once and I can't make it happen again.

> "webmasters who backlink hunted here also backlink hunted there"

Perhaps, but I think the Google search cookie data would be enough. It's being able to track from page to page via URL type-ins that I find interesting. For example, if you're looking to buy a house you may type in (or select from bookmarks) various estate agents one after the other. Useful data in addition to the link map IMO.

[amznVibe]

any personal firewall worth its salt should show you the urls passing through your system...
I use atguard (WRQ's firewall before Norton bought it and bloated it from 2megs to 30megs)
I am still using toolbar v1 and this is what I get:

/search?client=navclient-auto&googleip=O;216.239.41.104;100&ch=52259609162&freshness_check=3fmJESJnMoK5meFfx-IZI&orig=http%3A%2F%2Fexample%2Ecom%2F&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&features=Rank&q=info:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eexample%2Ecom%2Findex

since I don't allow auto-updates from Google, I suspect orig has been there awhile

[ciml]

Do you see the orig parameter often?