Google, currently the most dominant search engine, puts a price on privacy as they hide keyword referral data from organic searches who are logged-in into their Google Accounts. Personally, I find this depressing especially with the guys who are into Web Analytics. Hiding valuable data will sure affect how you do your own strategies for high converting keywords. Sucks, really. On a side note, some SEOers are foretelling that this is just another "evil" move by Google to dominate the field of Ad networks. Your thoughts?
This is very disappointing to see Google hiding keyword of organic search traffic. I just found detailed discussion on whiteboard Friday @seomoz...(must watch). I do agree with you as they are hiding only organic referral data where as paid referral is still showing. Here are few alternatives of this issue: - First evaluate the % of not provided keywords as it will be not more as compare to non sing-in users. This amount can be considered while working on keyword research and ROI. - We should not forget the search market shares of (bing+yahoo) which is around 27%. We can easily identify the converting keywords from them and can accordingly plan the strategies.
It was Whiteboard Emergency if I recall it correctly What I am more concerned about is whether the amount of users doing search while logged-in increases over time. This would mean more keywords would be hidden and few data to use for your own strategies.
right now i am getting 6% of keyword data as "not provided". As of now it doesn't seem enough to worry but in future if the percentage grows, it would be a reason to think. But what the Google is trying to prove by just hiding this data for non-paid searches and not for paid searches also?
What Google is trying to prove is that they can easily hide data. This protects them from other Ad Networks from getting sustainable information from them. Then again, 6% is either big or small depending on the amount of organic visits you're getting.
As far as i know...only Google analytics users can not see this data where are other traffic tracking tools is displaying this keyword data right? if is it so; they are going to loose analytics users day by day.
In theory, other traffic tracking tools also rely on what data Google provides them. If the data is already 'secured' then they are only getting what Google wants them to get. Wouldn't personally say that Google is going to lose analytics users day by day since they are the only ones who can give the data back to the users.
i have tested one campaign on Stacounter and i did not find any keyword under "not provided"...i think only Analytics is hiding data... would love to hear what other guys think !!
I also have a Statcounter and I don't think that they'll be able to provide any data which is already hidden from them. Hence, all they will show is what they 'can' see from Google (that of course excludes stats from the not provided data). IF, Statcounter is around 95% accurate from the pre-SSL era, how accurate do you think Statcounter would now be in the SSL era?
SEOjig is right: StatCounter plugin users are still getting all their keyword data. At least we are at CopyClique. It appears that StatCounter gets it data in a non-SSL way, so people using this plugin can breathe easy. The value of Google Analytics was already a bit questionable IMO. Now, it's almost like 'why bother'?
Well whatever they hide from us but they at least give some indication just choose "Landing Page" in segments so you can get idea about pages where visitors come!
Yeah, tell that to the hundreds of webmasters who still prefer Google Analytics as their web analytics tool. If we compare Google Analytics and Statcounter in terms of analytical depth, I think you already know who wins.
This is really causing me analytic issues now that a lot of people are doing SSL searches. Everyday I check our analytics and the #1 keyword is (not provided)! How am I supposed to do analysis when I don't even know what people are hitting my site for??