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Comment by ergest | Hacker News Reader

This is gonna mess up some major web analytics stats about referrers :)

It only changes the referrer after you click the button. You have to be sitting on the page first.

Only if a lot of people use it. I suspect something like this can continue to fly under the radar while only a tech savvy minority use it.

As someone who works with SEO, this was my first reaction. It's going to make a lot of my analytics wonky and the numbers won't be very accurate.

I guess you have to assume such a small percentage of people will actually be using this, so the numbers won't be too bad??

As someone who works with SEO, maybe it's time you learn your entire field of work depends on the good will of both search engines and users to not put a screwdriver in the ball you play with.

Actually, I do more development work than SEO, so referring to my "entire field of work" is a bit. . .well. . .erroneous.

But hey, whatever makes you feel better pal.

I guess you have to assume such a small percentage of people will actually be using this, so the numbers won't be too bad??

You don't "have to" assume that, but why start worrying about the source of error in your metrics now?

The cumulative wight of this and all the other problems with your data probably won't dip their utility below zero, so just go back to plugging your ears and yelling "lalalalala".

It's the same thing as with browser identification and detection of mobile devices - as soon as you start using them for non-info purposes e.g. disabling content or redirecting people to a mobile-specific page (or an advert for 'app of your site) that they don't want, then you have to expect that any well-meaning software will have the user device lie to you, because it's in the best interests of the user.

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