Facebook announced last week that all of its social network users will now access the site via a secure connection; a change that might affect the way marketers see the traffic they get from it. The switch from http to default https is valid for all Facebook visitors and for around 80% of the mobile site’s visitors, the company said in a blog post.
This shift to secure connection could represent an issue for marketers: this type of connection does not pass referrer information unless the website that gets the traffic uses https connection as well. Since October 2011, the on-going increase in “not provided” redirects from Google search have been routed by default via a secure connection for users currently logged in. However, Facebook said that it is also planning to control referrer headers.
The company explained that when users click on an external link, it wants the destination website to know that the user has been redirected from Facebook, without learning other sensitive information or ID. To make that happen, most browsers redirect through an http page, while on Google Chrome the redirect can be skipped via the use of a meta referrer option. That said, marketers and webmasters will continue to see Facebook as a referrer even after the switch to https.
Facebook said that over one third of its users had enabled the https connection following its introduction two years ago. Meanwhile, the company has worked to improve it, focusing on how to make it faster globally and further improve its compatibility with platform applications.