Click Tracking at Google (Hidden)

JavaScript function loads web bean onmousedown

[Yidaki]

Continued from:
[webmasterworld.com...]

---

I know, Google has been sporadically tracking clicks on result listings through redirects. It looks like click tracking is obviously now a default but instead of rewriting the listings' urls to redirects, the tracking is done through a "hidden" JavaScript function that activates a image request to track the click + position of the listing.

The JavaScript function

function clk(n,el) {
if(document.images){
(new Image()).src="/url?sa=T&start="+n+"&url="+escape(el.href);
}
return true;}

How it works

The listings' urls within the serps look like this:
<a href="http:*//www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/" onmousedown="return clk(2,this)">Google News</a>

So after you click on any listing, a invisible image gets loaded:
http:*//google.com/url?sa=T&start=2&url=http ://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/

The web bean (image) url together with its referer allows full tracking.

[yankobb]

If users click on only two or three results it should (hopefully) indicate that the results are better than if the user clicks on six or seven results or even keeps scrolling down further.

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that premise. Perhaps if you are just searching for some factual information but what about shopping related searches? Even if the SERPs returned nothing but relevant sites most users will still go through many of the sites found in the rankings just to find the best deals. If data showed that more people scrolled down when searching for "widgets" wouldn't say anything about how relevant the search was as they could have easily been just window shopping for the best price.

[Philosopher]

Hmm...maybe they have changed this since yesterday, but I'm not seeing any tracking on any of the searches I have performed. I do see the above mentioned tracking for the adwords, but not for the regulare search results.

[kaled]

yankobb,

You are right, I was simply trying to illustrate a point. Useful analysis would have to be much more complex than I indicated. For instance, Google might track when the search was abandoned, etc.

The difficult part is identifying success (happy user) as opposes to failure (exasperated user). This is tricky stuff not but impossible so far as broad statistics as concerned. For instance, it should be possible to guage after a major update/algo change whether users are more or less happy with results.

Kaled.

[proxyHunter]

ive actually seen for a particular term the SERP to be different when i refresh the page. goign back and forth between two different SERP

i deleted the google cookie for the click tracking and the SERP stayed normal(steady) on that term.

anyone else seen this b4?