Option to Pass Referrals in HTTPS Modes
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As Google shoved HTTPS down the throat of the web a few years ago, websites lost valuable browser data in the form of referral links/strings.
I would like the option added to Vivaldi to enable the send of referrers from https sites.
The main place this would be useful is search engine clicks. To be able to see the referring link again, would do vast amounts of good for websites.
If you do not know, Google has done everything it can to hide keyword data from websites.
- HTTPS is required for sites to rank - basically at all. (even if the site doesn't use cookies or user data)
- they all but require websites run Google Analytics.
- They are now forcing all sites to move to GA4 (which eliminates almost all keyword data).
- A Recent study showed that Google shows websites less than 50% of the keywords they appear under. (that is going to dropped to single digits when GA4 takes over)
In the 20yrs before, there were zero issues with the sending of referrer links to websites from search engine clicks. There were no major court cases, no lawsuits involving data, privacy, slander, or libel related to referral strings. It simply was not an issue.
I know every argument there is around this subject - boy it would be nice to see some push back on Google for data hording and abusing it's monopoly position.
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It also occurs to me that when referral strings show up in Website logs, webmasters and admins will look at the agent name. This will get Vivaldi new found exposure with a very important audience for any browser.
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@btabke said in Option to Pass Referrals in HTTPS Modes:
admins will look at the agent name.
But Vivaldi does not have a "Vivaldi user agent"!
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@btabke I do not know what you want. Referrers are sent. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Referer#browser_compatibility
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referrals are sent
On https, only the root domain is sent (eg: google.com), not the actual page (et: https://www.google.com/search?q=vivalidi.
Google uses a header
Referrer Policy: Strict-origin-when-cross-originSend only the origin when the protocol security level stays the same (HTTPS→HTTPS). Don't send the Referer header to less secure destinations (HTTPS→HTTP).
Most browsers interpret that to mean they shouldn't send a referral between domains. At best, https will only send the fqdn out (only google.com) if anything.
For example a search on google to my site, and then clicking on that in the serp, results in this request headers in Vivaldi (notice, only Google.com passes):
Request URL: https://www.webmasterworld.com/
Request Method: GET
Status Code: 200
Remote Address: 208.109.213.71:443
Referrer Policy: origin
content-encoding: gzip
content-length: 10297
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'none';
content-type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
date: Thu, 14 Jul 2022 16:10:12 GMT
server: Apache
strict-transport-security: max-age=300; includeSubDomains; preload
vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
x-frame-options: deny
x-robots-tag: noarchiveRequest Headers:
:authority: www.webmasterworld.com
:method: GET
:path: /
:scheme: https
accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,/;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.9
accept-encoding: gzip, deflate, br
accept-language: en-US,en;q=0.9
dnt: 1
referer: https://www.google.com/
sec-ch-ua: "Chromium";v="104", "/Not)A;Brand";v="24"
sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?0
sec-ch-ua-platform: "Windows"
sec-fetch-dest: document
sec-fetch-mode: navigate
sec-fetch-site: cross-site
sec-fetch-user: ?1
upgrade-insecure-requests: 1
user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10