If you're going to go to that much trouble anyway, may I suggest using: https://...

tonfa · on July 3, 2012

> I should point out it'll strip the search query from the referrer when you click the search links in the ssl version of Google's SERPs - so the Google Analytics (or any other analytics tools) won't have those inbound search query strings.

Last time I looked I don't think it was true. Analytics will get the data from the magic string in the referrer.

Robin_Message · on July 3, 2012

Surely there is no refer on a cross-domain navigation from an HTTPS site [1], and so the magic string won't make it there either.

[1] If there was, this could leak, for example, session ID in URL, which would be very bad on a supposedly secure site.

tonfa · on July 3, 2012

Google does a redirect to http before sending you out because of that... just look in the dev tools from your browser.

Robin_Message · on July 5, 2012

Ah, I understand what you mean now - Google deliberately redirect to their own site on http in order to "leak" that information in the referrer header. So we're both right, I just didn't understand you, sorry.

saturn · on July 3, 2012

Unfortunately seems to be US-only:

> The server at encrypted.google.com.au can't be found, because the DNS lookup failed

thanks for the tip though, still going to go with this.

bigiain · on July 3, 2012

Well, more "dot com domain only" than "US-only".

The dns magic underneath encrypted.google.com, www.google.com and www.google.com.au shows that doesn't matter - all three are "in Australia" (at the very least, within 21ms) from where I am (Sydney):

  [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute www.google.com.au
  traceroute: Warning: www.google.com.au has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.87
  traceroute to www-cctld.l.google.com (74.125.237.87), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
  1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.558 ms  1.766 ms  1.582 ms
  …
  8  syd01s06-in-f23.1e100.net (74.125.237.87)  20.318 ms  20.009 ms  20.457 ms
  
  [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute www.google.com
  traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.81
  traceroute to www.l.google.com (74.125.237.81), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
  1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  1.962 ms  3.753 ms  1.618 ms
  …
  9  syd01s06-in-f17.1e100.net (74.125.237.81)  19.927 ms  20.220 ms  20.404 ms
  
  [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute encrypted.google.com
  traceroute: Warning: encrypted.google.com has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.100
  traceroute to www3.l.google.com (74.125.237.100), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
  1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  17.068 ms  8.808 ms  1.609 ms
  …
  8  syd01s12-in-f4.1e100.net (74.125.237.100)  21.235 ms  20.064 ms  19.237 ms

recoil · on July 3, 2012

If I search for something where I might expect a regionally-customised result, like "newspaper", I get "The Sun", "The New York Times" and "The Guardian" from encrypted.google.com, but I get the SMH, "The Australian", etc. etc. from a regular google.com.au search.

nightpool · on July 12, 2012

I think that's a general feature of encrypted, no location customizations. (I'd have to double-check to make sure though)

saturn · on July 3, 2012

Wow, interesting, thanks for the research. I'm in Sydney too and I was surprised at how fast it was, but didn't think to look into it. Cool.

sp332 · on July 3, 2012

Earlier this year Google announced that they will roll out HTTPS-by-default to all localized Googles. I guess they haven't got it done yet. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/03/bringing-more-secur...