SEO Is Not Provided?
Amazing that you get so many hits on (not provided) huh? Back in 2011 Google stopped providing the search phrases from users that were logged into Google and in a secure https session. Last week they announced that they are extending that “security” to pretty much everyone… unless you’re an advertiser. The reason for this they say is “user protection”, however if you are using adwords you will still get the keyword search data, for some reason those users don’t need protection.
There are many theories circulating about why Google is doing this but as a search marketer, what does it mean for you? For ecommerce sites it really sucks. No longer will you be able to see what keywords coming from organic search are delivering sales. You will now only see that in adwords data. Nor will you be able to see any sort of sensible volume around specific keywords.
If you are not an advertiser, get to know your search queries in Webmaster Tools. Google is still providing keyword data there including impressions, CTR as well as an average organic ranking during a period. In addition to that, if you look at 30 days or less you can see the changes in those numbers when compared to the previous period. I look at those numbers more than I do Google analytics data for organic search. It won’t tell me what is the highest converting phrase or which phrases make more money but it will tell me what the potential traffic is which Analytics never has, as it only counted clicks. Webmaster search queries counts impressions as well. Sometimes it can be wildly inaccurate but over time you get a feel for what’s real and what you need to rank no.1 for.
If you are an adwords user you probably already know which phrases are high volume, high cost and high converting. If you are not using adwords, now is probably a good time to go back over your organic data for the last 12 months and look at things like seasonal trends for keyword traffic as you won’t have that data going forward.
Whilst bloody annoying there is one truism, the higher you rank, the more clicks you get, the more conversions you will have
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
