Mediarun Search Marketing News

Industry outcry as Google encrypt user referral data

By Matthew Kynaston

November 17th 2011

Search Engine Optimisation News

It’s been 1 month now since Google announced they would be encrypting user search queries in organic traffic.

For those who are unaware, when a user is logged into a Google account and use search, their query will not be available for view by web analytics tools i.e. Google Analytics. Instead, it is encrypted and appears as “(not provided)”.

Google stated that this was part of their “commitment to provide a more secure online experience”. This is despite the fact that they are not currently encrypting the same data from the same users for PPC Ads (i.e. the data you’d need to pay for).

Like most SEOs, we were quite concerned about this, and over the month we have monitored the effects of this as well as keeping an ear out for opinions across the industry. The response has been unanimously negative and sceptical.

The digital marketing resource hub, E-Consultancy blogged that 33% of search referral keywords for one of their most popular blogs was “(not provided)”

From what we have seen, this is an extreme example. Google predicted that this would affect less than 10% of all searches for all websites in their database, and there is only minimal loss in visibility our end at the moment.

However, this move by Google (and the likeliness that they won’t reverse this decision) poses quite daunting implications. SEO Specialist Paul North says:

“One scenario is that you can’t tell exactly how a page of content is performing in search, and therefore make it better/ more relevant for people looking for that information.”

Rand Fishkin, so-founder of SEOmoz, conducted a survey amongst 60 online marketers. His results show that by the 10th November, 12% of organic results search terms were now invisible to the marketers, and it was increasing. No matter how low the results, Mr Fishkin also made this very important point:

“The part that's very frustrating is that the missing data doesn't appear to be well reflected in the remaining data - the bounce rates, pages/visit, conversion rate, etc. are all dramatically different from the averages for the rest of the keywords, suggesting that there's some pretty unique search terms and landing pages coming via those logged-in searches. As the numbers climb, this means marketers are losing out on more and more opportunities to learn from the successes and failures of their content to perform for searchers, and can do less to address it.”

Like all news, we will follow these developments, and keep you posted of any significant developments.

To find out about the performance solution we can offer you and your business, speak to one of our consultants on +44 (0)8009 550 176 or contact us.