Mozilla’s developers enabled Google’s HTTPS encrypted search a couple days ago to be the default search service for the “nightly” developer trunk of the Firefox browser. I’m pretty sure this news should hit all us PPC and SEO guys pretty hard considering this will be live in the next couple months for everyone out there. I’m also pretty sure that other browsers will follow suite.
It’s estimated that 25% or so of Internet users are using Firefox to browse the web will have that search data revoked.
Let’s get to the bones. The search query information from these users will be shielded from their Internet service providers. It will also protect users a little bit because governments who might be using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) equipment to monitor the activity of users or censor and filter search results. They won’t be able to use the data.
If you remember back a couple months ago, Google started doing this:
Over the next few weeks, many of you will find yourselves redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra “s”) when you’re signed in to your Google Account. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page….
What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query.
What do you think this will do for all you PPC folks out there?
