Google has announced that it is rolling out a new SSL search service that allows you to search for websites securely. When you search using https://www.google.com any clicks from the search results will not register a referer in the http headers. This will cause great problems for analytics programs that rely on the referer information to identify which keywords and search engines were used to find the website, however, google claims that this "secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party".

Gmail recently changed its default mode to SSL and other services are due to follow.