How to tell when someone Googles you

Case 1: You Google me and click on my page

Yes, I'm using google as a verb. If you Google me and click on one of my pages, my web server logs the information:
1.2.3.4 - - [01/Oct/2009:10:23:41 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 7186 "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=larry+s&aq=f&aqi=g10&oq=&fp=7d15299a959dbb33" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)"

As you can see, I get your IP address, a date, an offset to Universal Time (-0400), a verb (GET, in this case / means my default site page), a status code (200=OK), and a referrer. From the referrer, I can tell you Googled me with the phrase "larry s". Finally, I also get some information about the browser you used, Firefox, and the operating system, Windows XP with service pack 2. There's a chance you may have used a anonymizing proxy, but I'd still get an entry. (Generally, Anonymizer says "TuringOS," so I know it's them.)

Case 2: You Google me and don't click on my page.

That's more difficult but not impossible, because I have a Google AdWords account. I bought my own name as a keyword. Google AdWords works by selling keywords for search insertion. It's an open market, with the second-highest bidder winning in a dutch auction that is Google's revenue machine. When you buy a keyword, you get two measures back from Google:

1. how many impressions it got (viewing)


2. how many clickthroughs it got. (someone clicks on the ad)

A keyword ad's success is measured by the ratio of impressions to clickthroughs. The more clickthroughs per impression, the better. So if you don't click on my ad link, which I have made irresistable by promising dirt on me, I still know that someone Googled me, because the impression counter increments with each search. If you click on a regular page on my server rather than the keyword ad (Google calls this "organic"), we're also back to case one above. If you don't click on any of my links, I don't get any of the details from case one.


And that's how I know that you Googled me. If you're wondering if you've been Googled, but don't have a web site with logs you can comb through, or don't want to set up a Google AdWords account, try Google's external keyword tool. Just don't forget to un-check the synonyms box.