...site they finally land can now check things like the users original search query that led to that site. All this is possible because of the referrer string. These strings provide details about the position of the results that was clicked by the user.

This news has also been confirmed by Google's Matt Cutts in the comments. This information will be beneficial for webmasters as, they can now analyze their ranking from country to country.

Earlier, referral links used to look something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

Now, Google users will start seeing some referrer strings like this:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oub
PaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

The primary difference between the two urls is that instead of /search? the URL contains a /url?. Since, Google Analytics doesn't depend on the /string? string, so they will not notice any difference in their reports. However, other analytic packages may need to incorporate this new change to maintain accurate pages.

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