Google Testing AJAX on Search Results Pages

Google has launched a test on a small per­cent­age of its users to try and find bet­ter ways to serve their search results. This test involves the use of AJAX which in some cases pre­vents ana­lyt­ics pack­ages from pick­ing up the Google refer­rer data. Although this test only impacts a small per­cent­age of Google’s traf­fic it impacts all ana­lyt­ics pack­ages on the mar­ket, includ­ing Google Ana­lyt­ics and includ­ing all SEO rank­ing tools.

This will NOT impact Omni­ture Search­Cen­ter clients. Search­Cen­ter adver­tis­ers will con­tinue to see proper con­ver­sion track­ing and will see no change in Search­Cen­ter per­for­mance, report­ing or func­tion­al­ity. All auto­mated bid rules will con­tinue to func­tion prop­erly.
Here’s the offi­cial response from Google:

“We’re con­tin­u­ally test­ing new inter­faces and fea­tures to enhance the user expe­ri­ence. We are cur­rently exper­i­ment­ing with a javascript enhanced result page because we believe that it may ulti­mately pro­vide a faster expe­ri­ence for our users. At this time only a small per­cent­age of users will see this exper­i­ment. It is not our inten­tion to dis­rupt refer­rer track­ing, and we are con­tin­u­ing to iter­ate on this project. For more infor­ma­tion on the exper­i­ments that we run on Google search, please see: http://​google​blog​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​6​/​0​4​/​t​h​i​s​-​i​s​-​t​e​s​t​-​t​h​i​s​-​i​s​-​o​n​l​y​-​t​e​s​t​.​h​tml.”

We are in dis­cus­sions with Google to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of exactly what this means for Omni­ture Site­Cat­a­lyst users. We’ve got a very strong rela­tion­ship with Google, as do many other big SEM ven­dors and ana­lyt­ics com­pa­nies, and we don’t believe Google will inten­tion­ally jeop­ar­dize these rela­tion­ships by imple­ment­ing a change with­out a clear plan and with­out giv­ing ample notice to their partners.

We will con­tinue to keep you informed as we learn how these lim­ited tests impact our customers.