What does a Google link say about you? | Nathaniel Read

What does a Google link say about you?

Just sending a Google Link to someone, you probably think it’s innocent enough (at the end of the day, it’s just a link) but it turns out the link says a lot more about you than you think as I recently discovered.

We’ll take this link as an example

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hello+there&safe=off&client=ms-android-tmobile-gb&prmd=ivmn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijqJyPxNXZAhXDJcAKHUlrC_cQ_AUIESgB&biw=360&bih=560#imgrc=eRNxhMsawcEDTM:

So the obvious one you can spot in there is the ms-android-tmobile-gb (client network and browser), UTF-8 (the character set we’re using) as well as hello+there as it’s what we’ve searched for.

It tells us the width is also 360px and height is 560px too, as well as that Google Safesearch is turned off.

It’s quite a bit more detail than you think you’re giving when you send someone a link and you should probably think twice about sending someone a raw Google link again, especially as it could give away your online anonymity!

  Image of Toolbox from Google Sitemaster tools, analytical diagram from Google Analytics. Inspired by