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nLab > nLab Technical Matters: Google links strange behaviour

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1 to 14 of 14

  1.  
    • CommentRowNumber1.
    • CommentAuthorTim_Porter
    • CommentTimeSep 29th 2018

    I did a Google search on filtered object. It gave me the nLab entry …. but clicking on the Google item nothing happened! I tried filtered topological space…. same behaviour. Filtered category … ditto! Some other searches worked perfectly. I noted that if I copied the address under the title in the Google search result the address worked perfectly.

    This is not a bother but is intriguing! What is going on? I can easily work around it but why is it happening and does it happen for other people? It happens on Firefox and Safari but not on Chrome, where the link works perfectly.

    I also used the search engine Qwant which worked perfectly.

    • CommentRowNumber2.
    • CommentAuthorUrs
    • CommentTimeSep 29th 2018

    I have the same issue with Google recently. Not sure what’s going on.

    • CommentRowNumber3.
    • CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
    • CommentTimeSep 29th 2018

    Ditto.

    • CommentRowNumber4.
    • CommentAuthorJohn Dougherty
    • CommentTimeSep 29th 2018
    • (edited Sep 29th 2018)

    I have this problem, too. I notice that if I ⌘-click on the google search result to open it in a new tab then it sends me to a “Redirect Notice” page that points to the nLab entry.

    • CommentRowNumber5.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeSep 29th 2018

    I noticed this too the other day. It’s definitely very recent.

    • CommentRowNumber6.
    • CommentAuthorTim_Porter
    • CommentTimeSep 29th 2018

    Is it something to do with the word ’filtered’?

    • CommentRowNumber7.
    • CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
    • CommentTimeSep 29th 2018

    Tim: no, not at all.

    • CommentRowNumber8.
    • CommentAuthorTim_Porter
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2018
    • (edited Sep 30th 2018)

    There does seem to be a pattern. If the entry title consists of two or more words then the link is less likely to work. Perhaps the + is the problem. The space between words is being encoded by + and then in the link as %2B. Is it this which is mucking up the link?

    • CommentRowNumber9.
    • CommentAuthorRichard Williamson
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2018
    • (edited Sep 30th 2018)

    This is very weird. It looks to me like a bug in Google. Tim is on to something in #8. If one looks at the long URL which Google is using, the spaces are encoded as %252B. If one replaces these by %2B, the link works. It looks the spaces have in effect been double encoded.

    Now, it is true that using ’+’ in the URL for spaces like the nLab does is not really correct practise, one should use %20. But still, I would definitely regard this as a Google bug, because it is not the nLab that is doing the double encoding.

    [Edit: actually, it looks like the URL is correct in Google, and that the bug is in Firefox/Safari itself, because if one hovers over the Google link in Firefox, it shows %2B as it should. Firefox/Safari seems to be double encoding when one clicks on the link. On the other hand, everybody cannot have updated their browsers at the same time, so Google must have changed something, even if technically the bug is not on their side. I would guess that Google will address this within a few days.]

    • CommentRowNumber10.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2018

    actually, it looks like the URL is correct in Google, and that the bug is in Firefox/Safari itself, because if one hovers over the Google link in Firefox, it shows %2B as it should

    The mouseover URL display in google search is a lie. If you right-click and “Copy link location” you’ll see that the actual URL is a google url containing the %252B that redirects to the nlab.

    • CommentRowNumber11.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2018

    It looks like the reason it works on Chrome is that Google actually sends different HTML to Firefox and to Chrome.

    The HTML sent to Firefox lies about the URL by having an anchor tag with the correct URL in the href, but with an onmousedown event that (apparently) changes the URL to the google tracking redirect URL. Note that after you right-click and copy the link location, or middle/whatever click to open the link in a new tab, the mouseover URL changes to the google tracking redirect one, presumably since a “mousedown” has happened.

    In contrast, the HTML sent to Chrome lacks the onmousedown event, instead using a ping attribute to handle the google tracking. According to this page Firefox does support the ping attribute, but maybe google doesn’t trust non-chrome browsers to ping them.

  12. Good investigating! I’d say for us it’s good that it’s a Google bug, because there must be millions of web pages with the same issue, so I expect they’ll notice and fix quickly.

    • CommentRowNumber13.
    • CommentAuthorTim_Porter
    • CommentTimeOct 1st 2018
    • (edited Oct 1st 2018)

    Perhaps we should tell them! There may be millions of people saying that Google is sure to notice etc. (I doubt it) Google has a help line, I think, so perhaps just ask what is happening. I tried to see if something like it had been reported on the help lines but could not find anything. I will try searching with other more specific search queries. (Edit later: without success although other similar issues have been reported.)

  14. Looks like it's fixed now, as expected (Google will have precise monitoring which picks up on the fact that things were not working).

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