I. What Baidu has done

a) Starting from Baidu's httpsization

Actually, the beginning of this matter has to start from the Spring Festival of the Year of the Sheep a few months ago: Baidu chose to quietly switch to https during the Spring Festival when the traffic is relatively small, and Baidu has now httpsized the whole search site. We all know that https is more secure than http, without the "S" http in the transmission process is plaintext, and not on the transmission of both sides of the verification, in the transmission process of any party can modify the data.

Saying a paragraph: a hacker hacked a girl's router, saw the girl is brushing microblogging, so found the girl's microblogging account. It also gave the girl's browser a pop-up window saying: take an early break.

Not only is the content in plaintext during HTTP transmission, the transport layer can also return modified content to the user. Before Baidu enabled HTTPS, the matter of DNS hijacking was widespread in China. There are many gray chains of interest in this area, such as:

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● Direct hijacking of jumps (e.g., going to Taobao's A product page will first jump to some B product page)

● Adding a little tail to the URL for you when surfing the web (e.g., adding a tn= to the end of Baidu's url, which pays for this traffic source)

● Embed a piece of js or an iframe for you to pop ads

● Modify the ads alliance ID in the webpage to steal other webmasters' alliance income

● Modify some information in cookies to create non-existent ads (for example, the user goes to Taobao directly, but after modifying the referer and cookies to be taken as a source of amateurs to enter)

This is a good example of how you can use a webpage to create ads for your website.

● Modify the Baidu search results in the bidding ranking or even the natural ranking

● Analyze your online behavior and sell your data to a third party: someone who searches for "abortion" receives a phone call from the hospital

The above is just a list of some common behaviors, and there are many more. The fact is that Baidu has to deal with a lot of these complaints every day. In fact, Baidu handles a lot of these complaints every day:

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After receiving countless complaints from users, Baidu was determined to fix the problem. This led to the later emergence of Baidu's site-wide HTTPS.

b) What is REFERER?

REFERERER full name is: HTTP (s) REFERERER. this thing in the HTTP header, the browser Referer is used to tell the server from which page I link to the server, the server can get some information for processing.

c) Why remove keywords from REFERER

After Baidu HTTPSed, Baidu is determined to go further in privacy protection. But why is it removing keywords from REFERER?

While Baidu has done HTTPS encryption for the whole site, the jump from Baidu to the target page is with REFERER, DNS hijackers can still easily deduce what you searched before that by analyzing the REFERER of the page you jumped to. Based on this, DNS hijackers can still do a lot of things to target users, such as:

● Display ads based on search behavior

● Make your behavior into an interface and provide it to some online alliances to display ads accurately

● Analyze the search behavior to form a report to sell

This time Baidu eliminated the keywords in the REFERER instead of After canceling the REFERER, the webmaster only knows that the user comes from Baidu, but he doesn't know which words he searched for from Baidu. Although I am a webmaster, but I believe that any user will be in favor of Baidu to do so.

Two, the impact of the interests of all parties

a) DNS hijackers and some public ****WIFI

The first to bear the brunt of the DNS hijackers and some public ****WIFI. Although they can continue to continue to hijack the user through Baidu outside of the other channels, Baidu's interest in this area has been completely cut off, the specifics of which can be analyzed by my previous The analysis of their own brain.

b>Some of the poor strength of the network alliance will be out of the stage of history

Many of the network alliance claimed to have a background in big data, in essence, from Baidu's search behavior to take the data. After Baidu enabled HTTPS and canceled the keywords in REFERER, a large number of online alliance companies relying on this data will see a rapid decline in the quality of ad presentation in the short term. There are also some advertising alliances with large blocks of advertising distributors is to do DNS hijacking, these network alliance I'm afraid that in the future the days are even more difficult.

c)

The statistical tools

Can't get the keywords in the REFERER after, in addition to knowing that a traffic comes from Baidu other than no way to know. So Baidu's search share is still retained in the statistics, but can not be based on this to do further analysis. In two ways:

● Statistical flow of any one of the tools to do, statistical keywords are left only Baidu statistical tools and Baidu webmaster platform search keyword tool. The loss of keyword statistics, more and more webmasters will turn to Baidu's own tools, this is undoubtedly.

● Missing search data statistics tool, is not much value to dig out. And mining value is precisely the life of third-party statistical tools.

So I'm afraid third-party stats tools are going to be big losers, caught in a vicious cycle of declining stats quality and lost users.

d)Little impact on small and medium-sized webmasters

As a webmaster, I am of course concerned about my own interests. Baidu closes one door but opens two windows. Webmasters can also analyze traffic from Baidu through Baidu statistics and webmaster platforms. So this matter is handled well, in fact, no impact.

● You can exchange data with Baidu statistics to understand your own traffic from Baidu. And the greater good is: let Baidu know that you are a high-quality, rule-abiding webmaster, let Baidu know your operation, Baidu may give you better weight (maybe Baidu rankings have reference to Baidu statistics data, who knows)

● If you do not want to use Baidu statistics, you can also through the Baidu webmaster tool. From my personal experience: the webmaster platform not only provides a display of keywords, but also tells the webmaster the click-through rate and average ranking of each word. This keyword report is not detailed, but points out the direction of optimization.

After canceling the referer, third-party statistical tools can still count the total amount from Baidu, but the keyword details are missing. Baidu statistics and the Baidu webmaster platform just make up for this piece of data.

Three, summarize

From Baidu's full enablement of HTTPS to the gradual elimination of keywords in the REFERERER, the process involved in the group is huge. The interests of all parties are involved, and Baidu must make a choice. Take this step to carry some pressure:

● HTTPS than usual 6-7 times the cost of performance, open speed is 30% -50% slower. This needs to be optimized for a good user experience.

● Full-site HTTPS requires more investment in servers and hardware equipment. There are many departments involved.

● If subject to DDOS, HTTPS is more difficult to resolve, and the interested party may do DDOS to Baidu

● Some webmasters who can not read will accuse. In addition to explaining, more needs to be done. It can be said that Baidu's considerations are still more thoughtful, that is, to protect the user's privacy, but also to provide convenience to the webmaster, to protect the webmaster ecosystem.

We can see the price Baidu pays for the user experience, all of which will be transformed into Baidu's competitiveness in the end. Internet era, what you do for the user what the user will give you. I'm afraid this is also as SEOer really want to learn and understand it.