Sunday, January 29, 2012

Can I Get The Search Phrase From Google?


I want to make several uses of the search phrase that users used in google in order to reach my site.



Is there any programmatic way to do that?



Thanks, Oran

4 comments:

  1. Use the HTTP_REFERER server variable.

    $referer= $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
    //find the search query from google that brought them here
    $qref= strpos($referer,’google’);
    if($qref!=”){
    $qstart = strpos($referer,’q=’);
    $qend = strpos($referer,’&’,$qstart);
    $qtext= substr($referer,$qstart+2,$qend-$qstart-2);
    $qtext= str_replace(‘+’,’ ‘,$qtext);
    }
    echo $qtext


    Taken from here.

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  2. You can use the code below:

    $referrer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
    if (!empty($referrer)) {
    $parts_url = parse_url($referrer);
    $query = isset($parts_url['query']) ? $parts_url['query'] : '');
    if($query) {
    parse_str($query, $parts_query);

    $ref_keywords = isset($parts_query['q']) ? $parts_query['q'] : (isset($parts_query['query']) ? $parts_query['query'] : '' ));
    }
    }


    However, note that Google has now stopped sending the query string in their referrer for all logged in users. So your functionality will work only for users who are logged out of Google . Here is more information on this http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure.html

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  3. I reckon it should be in the referrer, as the they append the search string to the url via the q-parameter.

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  4. You can get it from the "HTTP_referer" in the request.($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];)

    see also another question regarding the topic

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