How does Google Instant change the referer sent by the browser? - ajax

If you click on a result in Google Instant, the referer sent by your browser to the destination website contains a bunch of parameters, including the all important q=[autocompleted query]
But you're coming from a page whose URL is simply http://www.google.com/ with a bunch of stuff after the # character, i.e. as an on-page anchor.
So the browser appears to be sending a URL as the referer which is different from the URL of the page that you were viewing when you clicked.
There doesn't seem to be an additional redirection, so how on earth do they do that?

Most of the time, a Google search result actually sends you to a Google redirect page rather than directly to the target page. They use JavaScript to switch the target of the link onmousedown as you click on it.
You can see this effect by click-and-holding on the search result link and watching your status bar.
This isn't specific to Google Instant, they've been doing it for quite a long time on their standard results pages.

The page anchor part of the URL can be manipulated client-side without a new request to the server. Even when talking about static anchor links (e.g. Section Foo), clicking on them does not cause a new request to be sent to the server; it is processed completely within the browser.
The javascript being used by Google to make Google Instant work is simply altering the anchor programatically before making a request to the server.

What Google are you using?
My URL after searching is this:
http://www.google.es/#sclient=psy&hl=es&q=something+to+search&aq=f&aqi=g4g-o1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=b0....
It does include the q= part

Related

How to make browser show a URL that will not actually retrieve protected content

I have read articles that give various ways to do "URL masking" so that the browser's URL bar does not show the actual location of the content. Such methods include setting up an .htaccess file, showing content in an iframe, or loading content from another source with javascript.
The problem with all of these methods is that the URL shown in the browser can actually be used to view the content I want to protect, even though it's coming from another location.
I need a way to have the browser display protected content while the URL bar displays a URL that will NOT show that content, because I don't want a person who has been given access to the content to be able to share access to that content by giving the URL away to others.
Is this possible?
Maybe you could use something like a randomly re-generated URI. Every time the link is consumed through an authorized channel, the route is invalidated on the server, and a new one takes its place.
Note:
The safest way to prevent unauthorized access to a URL may be to add authentication (user/pass or otherwise) to your content.

Why is my ajax content not being indexed by google

I have tried to set my site up ( http://www.diablo3values.com )according to the guidelines set out here : https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/ However, it appears that Google has updated their indexes (because I see the revisions to the meta description tags) but the ajax content does not show up in the index.
I am trying to use the “Handle pages without hash fragments” option.
If you view either of the following:
http://www.diablo3values.com/?_escaped_fragment_=
http://www.diablo3values.com/about?_escaped_fragment_=
you will correctly see the HTML snap shot with my content. (those are the two pages I an most concerned about).
Any Ideas? Am I doing something wrong? How do you get google to correclty recognize the tag.
I'm typing this as an answer, since it got a little to long to be a comment.
First of all, your links seems to point to localhost:8080/about, and not /about, which probably is why google doesn't index it in the first place.
Second, here's my experience with pushstate urls and Google AJAX crawling:
My experience is that ajax crawling with pushstate urls is handled a little differently by google than with hashbang urls. Since google won't know that your url is a pushstate url (since it looks just like a regular url), you need to add <meta name="fragment" content="!"> to all your pages, not only the "root" page. And google doesn't seem to know that the pages are part of the same application, so it treats every page as a separate Ajax application. So the Google bot will never actually create a navigation structure inside _escaped_fragment_, like _escaped_fragment_=/about, as it would with a hashbang url (#!/about). Instead, it will request /about?_escaped_fragment_= (which you aparently already have set up). This goes for all your "deep links". Instead of /?_escaped_fragment_=/thelink, google will always request /thelink?_escaped_fragment_=.
But as said initially, the reason it doesn't work for you is probably because you have localhost:8080 urls in your _escaped_fragment_ generated html.
Googlebot only knows to crawl the escaped fragment if your urls conform to the hash bang standard. As users navigate your site, your urls need to be:
http://www.diablo3values.com/
http://www.diablo3values.com/#!contact
http://www.diablo3values.com/#!about
Googlebot actually needs to see these urls in the source code so that it can follow them. Then it knows to download the following urls:
http://www.diablo3values.com/?_escaped_fragment=contact
http://www.diablo3values.com/?_escaped_fragment=about
On your site you appear to be loading a new page on each click, and then loading the content of each page via AJAX too. This is not how I would expect an AJAX site to work. Usually the purpose of using AJAX is so that the user never has to load a whole new page. When the user clicks, the new content section is loaded and inserted into the page. You serve the navigation once and then you only serve escaped fragments of the content.

How to do ajax loading with URL change but not page redirection?

If you carefully notice facebook, you will understand that the when you visit one page to another then the whole page is not refreshed or redirected but the URL changes when navigating to new page. It is more clear when chat windows are open, they remains static during page loading. As other website does this by using the # but facebook does not.
There is another example came to me: http://www.davidwalsh.name/. Visit the site and open other pages within their site and you will understand what I mean. Don't forget to notice the URL change.
How they do this?
Added More: I want a way that the page content will be loaded with ajax, change the URL for bookmark feature but when changing URL it should not reload / refresh the page by not using # (hash).
You have two questions:
For the URL change you can put the path instead of the # in the href property of the anchor (e.g /otherlink).
For opening the chat or opening some div does not require to send it in the url, its the onclick event on the div and its expands. Also the chat remains open may be thay set cookie or flag when the chat is first time opened and checking and changing the chat with flag they are setting.
As suggested by #andytuba
For Facebook, Google "hash navigation ajax".
For DavidWalsh, google "history API".

Ajax generated pages with different URLs

I couldn't really word the title very well, but here's my problem: I've got a webpage that reads from a database each time the user clicks a button, the content is then replaced for part of the page.
Because it is an ajax load, everything is done in the background, and so the URL stays the same. This wasn't be a problem at all until I realised that I will want to have a different Facebook comments box for each set of content that is loaded - so if someone comments, it is posted to their facebook profile, people click on the link and are then taken to different content.
So... what I need is some way of referencing each set of content, and I've found a site that does exactly that (I'm sure there are a lot of them).
Here's the link.
Each set of content has a different 'hash code' (because I don't know the actual name for it) which is appended to the URL - in this case the code is "#1922934", this allows people to post links to it that specific set of content on Facebook etc. - and also allows a different Facebook comment box for each set of content.
Does anyone know how such a set-up can be achieved or how these 'hash codes' work?
Here's a document from wikipedia on it.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragment_identifier][1]
The main idea is that URI fragments are used because they don't cause a page reload. They also can be used to refer to anchors on a web page.
What I would do is on page load use JavaScript to read the URI fragment (location.hash) then make a request to your server to load the comments etc. The URI fragment cannot be read by a server and is only found through a client (browser)
Sounds like you want something like SammyJS.

Modify Address Bar URL in AJAX App to Match Current State

I'm writing an AJAX app, but as the user moves through the app, I'd like the URL in the address bar to update despite the lack of page reloads. Basically, I'd like for them to be able to bookmark at any point and thereby return to the current state.
How are people handling maintaining RESTfulness in AJAX apps?
The way to do this is to manipulate location.hash when AJAX updates result in a state change that you'd like to have a discrete URL. For example, if your page's url is:
http://example.com/
If a client side function executed this code:
// AJAX code to display the "foo" state goes here.
location.hash = 'foo';
Then, the URL displayed in the browser would be updated to:
http://example.com/#foo
This allows users to bookmark the "foo" state of the page, and use the browser history to navigate between states.
With this mechanism in place, you'll then need to parse out the hash portion of the URL on the client side using JavaScript to create and display the appropriate initial state, as fragment identifiers (the part after the #) are not sent to the server.
Ben Alman's hashchange plugin makes the latter a breeze if you're using jQuery.
Look at sites like book.cakephp.org. This site changes the URL without using the hash and use AJAX. I'm not sure how it does it exactly but I've been trying to figure it out. If anyone knows, let me know.
Also github.com when looking at a navigating within a certain project.
It is unlikely the writer wants to reload or redirect his visitor when using Ajax.
But why not use HTML5's pushState/replaceState?
You'll be able to modify the addressbar as much as you like. Get natural looking urls, with AJAX.
Check out the code on my latest project:
http://iesus.se/
This is similar to what Kevin said. You can have your client state as some javascript object, and when you want to save the state, you serialize the object (using JSON and base64 encoding). You can then set the fragment of the href to this string.
var encodedState = base64(json(state));
var newLocation = oldLocationWithoutFragment + "#" + encodedState;
document.location = newLocation; // adds new entry in browser history
document.location.replace(newLocation); // replaces current entry in browser history
The first way will treat the new state as a new location (so the back button will take them to the previous location). The latter does not.
SWFAddress works in Flash & Javascript projects and lets you create bookmarkable URLs (using the hash method mentioned above) as well as giving you back-button support.
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/
The window.location.hash method is the preferred way of doing things. For an explanation of how to do it,
Ajax Patterns - Unique URLs.
YUI has an implementation of this pattern as a module, which includes IE specific work arounds for getting the back button working along with re-writing the address using the hash. YUI Browser History Manager.
Other frameworks have similar implementations as well. The important point is if you want the history to work along with the re-writing the address, the different browsers need different ways of handling it. (This is detailed in the first link article.)
IE needs an iframe based hack, where Firefox will produce double history using the same method.
If OP or others are still looking for a way to do modify browser history to enable state, using pushState and replaceState, as suggested by IESUS, is the 'right' way to do it now. It's main advantage over location.hash seems to be that it creates actual URLs, not just hashes. If browser history using hashes is saved, and then revisited with JavaScript disabled, the app won't work, since the hashes aren't sent to the server. However, if pushState has been used, the entire route will be sent to the server, which you can then build to respond appropriately to the routes. I saw an example where the same mustache templates were used on both the server and the client side. If the client had JavaScript enabled, he would get snappy responses by avoiding the roundtrip to the server, but the app would work perfectly fine without the JavaScript. Thus, the app can gracefully degrade in the absence of JavaScript.
Also, I believe there is some framework out there, with a name like history.js. For browsers that support HTML5, it uses pushState, but if the browser doesn't support that, it automatically falls back to using hashes.
Check if user is 'in' the page, when you click on the URL bar, JavaScript says you are out of page.
If you change the URL bar and press 'ENTER' with the symbol '#' within it then you go into the page again, without click on the page manually with mouse cursor, then a keyboard event command (document.onkeypress) from JavaScript will be able to check if it's enter and active the JavaScript for redirection.
You can check if user is IN the page with window.onfocus and check if he's out with window.onblur.
Yeah, it's possible.
;)

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