Does this bug anyone else? It’s possible with referrals from major search engines to get the search keywords that were used to find the page, which helps you to understand why people read your blog. But referrals from the Google Blog Search strip the keywords off.

A referral string from a regular Google search for "tim jarrett" looks like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22tim+jarrett%22&btnG=Google+Search

However, if you run the same search against Google Blog Search and click through a result, the referrer just shows what page was targeted:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.jarretthousenorth.com/

This is annoying for me, because I like to know why Google users find my site interesting. I understand technically why it happens—the redirect page, google.com/url, causes it because it loads in the user’s browser before loading the destination. But why does Google use the redirects on the search results in the first place? Is it to gather click statistics? If so, there are other, less intrusive ways. Or are they doing something else with the redirects, maybe something to do with stopping blog spam?

Some input from Google would be welcomed here.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not using Bloglines. As I wrote a few days ago, I’ve been having problems with my feed in their service. Yesterday one of their support people left a comment on the post:

It appears that your server is blocking the Bloglines crawlers. When we try to fetch your feed, we receive a HTTP 500 error. If we receive a permanent error like this for 14 consecutive days, we assume the feed is dead and we remove it from the system. My guess is that this is what happened to your feed.

Sure enough, my site has the dreaded Bloglines [!] next to it in my list of feeds again.

And I’ve been having 500 errors accessing the site from my hotel, which is why I’ve been updating so infrequently this week—well, that and the fact that our coworkers have been extremely hospitable.

If someone is reading this site from www.jarretthousenorth.com, please try reading it at discuss.jarretthousenorth.com and let me know if you run into any problems.

WSJ: Verizon’s Fios Service Moves US Internet Beyond a Snail’s Pace. Um, me please. Though the economics are a bit tricky. Even at $45 for bundled Fios and local phone, we would still be paying more, net-net, when considering the impact on our Comcast cable prices without the Internet bundle.

Damn it, though. Getting higher throughput on the internal wireless network and 15 mbps wired?? I wan’ it. Sniff.