Google.com and clients1.google.com/generate_204

Question

I was looking into google.com\'s Net activity in firebug just because I was curious and noticed a request was returning \"204 No Content.\"

It turns out that a 204 N

Answer 1

Well i have been looking at this for a few times and resulted that Google logs referer's where they come from first time visiting the google.com for ex; tracking with Google Chrome i have a 90% guess that its for Logging Referers, maybe User-Agent statistics well known when Google release its list of standards of browser usage:

• Request URL: http://clients1.google.se/generate_204

• Request Method: GET

• Status Code: 204 No Content

Response Headers

• Content-Length: 0
• Content-Type: text/html
• Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 17:06:24 GMT
• Server: GFE/2.0

Here "Referer" under "^Request Headers" shows Googles statistics that many folks come from Microsoft.com, also parsing out the word "Windows 7" to help me focus on Windows 7 in my up-following searches that session

//Steven