Outcry From SEO’s As Google Hide Keyword Info
There has been an outcry today after Google announced that they would no longer be supplying keyword information for organic search terms where the user is logged in. This will have a big impact on Google Analytics, with this blog already getting visits for keyword “(not provided)”.
It was announced on a number of Google blogs, but the main information about how it affects Google Analytics was naturally on the Google Analytics blog.
Basically they have enabled SSL as the default search for those that are logged in, if that logged in user then clicks on a natural search listing to your website you will see medium as “organic” in Google Analytics, but you won’t see what the keyword is. But get this, Google AdWords is unaffected!
So basically – it’s for privacy, but not if you click the advert. Does that make sense? Not really, no.
I’ve noticed Avinash having to defend himself a bit on Twitter and the comments on the actual post are pretty scathing, no doubt they did it for good reason, but it perhaps hasn’t been explained well enough to Google Analytics users and SEO’s alike.
The other fear is that, like other Google updates, it starts with logged in users as a kind of test and then gets rolled out to everyone – can you imagine if you got no organic keyword details on visits to your website? How would you distinguish between brand/non-brand, people looking for info vs those who want to buy?
It seems like Google have managed to alienate the SEO industry quite a lot today.
12 Comments
Ian Lockwood - http://www.boom-online.co.uk
I think Joost hit the nail on the head in his post on SEOBook.com – it’s to stop competitors in the display advertising space using keyword referrer data for search retargeting: http://www.seobook.com/false-privacy-claims
As you say, wouldn’t be surprised if it gets rolled out across the board in time.
James Fairbrother
This could be googles way of monopolising the paid analytics market, making the data only available to their paid suites.
David Whitehouse
I doubt that very much James. I think its just some privacy thing that they haven’t explained very well.
Jonah Keegan - http://www.clicktruemedia.com/
I’d expect a lot of long faces at http://www.Wordstream.com today…
Chris M - http://www.imod.co.za
This really isn’t ideal at all. I wonder what new tools the Analytics team will come up with to buy back some faith!
David Whitehouse
They’ve already released something new, I’ll be blogging about it today or tomorrow.
Julian - http://www.julianmoskov.com
The timing of the Visitors Flow announcement, if that’s what you’re referring to, is surely intentional! Looking forward to your views on it though.
David Whitehouse
Yeah I imagine it is intentional – I don’t have access to it yet, which is a shame 🙁
Teknet JoeD - http://www.teknet.org.uk
We rushed out to buy notprovided.co.uk as it will soon become the most converting keyword of all time!! 🙂 haha
David Radford - http://www.bigredradish.com
Just reinforces that Google are an advertising company rather than a search engine… Just about everything that they are rolling out at the moment favours PPC and forces advertisers to pay enough money to make sure they are top of the ‘insatant’ results – now we’re going to have to do PPC to get keywords as well!?!… time will tel I guess
Neil - http://www.everestmedia.co.uk
Just another one of Google’s changes that we just have to take on the chin and move on. One of lives constant battles!
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