About a year ago, Google started to protect the privacy of users logged into its system by not passing their keyword data along to publishers’ websites – unless, of course, the publishers also advertised with Google. The search giant claimed the move would affect less than ten percent of searches. Why is the reality so different?
Make no mistake, it’s vastly different from what Google claimed it would be. Just ask anyone who studies their Google Analytics data. When a signed-in user performs a Google search, the search engine encrypts the data; the search shows up in GA as “not provided” rather than a search for a particular keyword. If the number of “not provided” searches grows too high, SEOs and marketers can no longer tell what effect, if any, their marketing efforts are achieving. For many websites, the data – or lack of it – reached that level months ago.
Barry Schwartz writing for Search Engine Land cited a study conducted over eleven months by Optify. Covering 424 websites, 17,143,603 visits and 7,241,093 referring keywords, the percentage of “not provided” keywords has risen alarmingly. According to the study, Google withheld 39 percent of search terms – that’s one out of every 2.5 visits!
That’s not even the worst news. The study noted that about 13 percent of companies see “not provided” rates as high as 60 percent. Can you imagine if all you knew about more than half of your visitors was that they found you in Google, but you had no idea for which terms? Sadly, I know a number of you don’t need to imagine it, because it’s your current reality.
Why are the numbers so much greater than Google originally said they would be? Danny Sullivan offered some suggestions. He notes that “as Google has continued to grow its Google+ social network, it has encouraged people sign-in as much as it can…All those signed-in searches have keywords withheld.” Also, in July, Firefox started using Google SSL Search by default – whether or not users were actually signed in to a Google service. “Overnight, a huge chunk of search terms got withheld,” Sullivan observed. Two months later, Apple copied Firefox’s move for searchers using Safari in iOS 6.
Perhaps one of the more interesting points about the “not provided” data is that the percentages aren’t consistent. Some websites are seeing a very small percentage of visits where Google is withholding keyword information, while others are seeing nearly all of their keyword information withheld. What is responsible for this vast difference?
Matt O’Toole at Analytics SEO offers up a tantalizing theory. He studied data for several hundred websites being monitored by his company over the past year, and found an overall “not provided” average of more than 20 percent by September 2012. This reflected steady growth from an initial three percent “not provided” during the first couple of weeks after Google began encrypting data. But not all websites came close to that percentage. One website showed consistently low “not provided” traffic all year long, at around one tenth of one percent. Another website showed a peak of “not provided” traffic around 98.4 percent!
Could these outliers provide clues as to what kinds of sites might naturally see low or high “not provided” percentages? O’Toole thought the demographics data might be telling. He found that the website with the low “not provided” rate featured a user base of males aged 45 to 64 years. The one with the high “not provided” rate, on the other hand, appealed to females aged 25 to 44 years. This led him to ask “whether there were certain demographics more likely to be logged into Google+/GMail and therefore more likely to be contributing to your site’s Not Provided traffic?” Sure enough, looking at the demographic data for Gmail, he found that a high percentage of its users were both males and females between the ages of 18 and 34.
O’Toole suggested that marketers might be able to use this knowledge in their efforts going forward. “For instance, were your site to be below the norm in terms of Not Provided averages, you could assume that your userbase might be less likely to have Google+/Gmail accounts and therefore less likely to take any notice of the work you planned to do on your client’s Google+ page,” he observed.
What else can you do if you’re facing this kind of data blackout? You need to use the information that Google hasn’t encrypted. Look at the landing pages for your “not provided” traffic, and consider what’s making them so attractive. Use the keyword data that you DO have. And try to avoid making the wrong assumptions. Sadly, it looks like “Not Provided” isn’t going away any time soon, so you need to make the best of the situation. Good luck!
The post One Year of Not Provided Google Data appeared first on SEO Chat.
Shouldn’t the results be more recent?
I understand how Google spiders work and how they rank things. Is a decade old list still relevant for some reason?
what is the difference between google analytics and google webmaster? i am almost finished my website now and i dont know the difference between the two. what are the differences?
I know I’ve had some visits, but they’re still saying zero. I just opened up Google ANalytics yesterday, so maybe they just haven’t updated yet?
Speculate if you like but please provide a link to back up your reply if you are sure of the answer.
I see that I should have been clearer in my question.
How does Google Maps determine what the center of town is?
I’ve been using Google Analytics on Tumblr for over two years and love it. Is it possible to add it to my Twitter page? I have read some stuff about being able to add it to a Facebook fan page but so far no luck with Twitter. I would assume it’s because there’s no HTML editing on Twitter like there is with Tumblr. If you can give me a step by step way to insert the Google Analytics code to my Twitter page, that would be great.
There is an app for jailbroken phones called ‘Cylay’ which not only has a gps tracker, but remotely lets you take a picture from your iphone if it gets stolen to see who took your phone, any good apps out there similar to this?
On google analytics how do you set up a filter to exclude an IP address for an entire account as opposed to just a profile?
All search engines contain summary details of the website but when we open the site , it may be dated back to several years by which time the information has changed a lot . A provision of date , particularly date of last updating would be the answer.
I use google analytics. The service I sell online is location specific. I am getting visits clustered around various locations.
Any creative ideas on how to target visitors from specific locations? Does this make any sense?
Something like: If you are from San Diego, click here for a special offer?
Thoughts? Ideas? Experience to share?
I can’t seem to find anything, no matter what I google. Any help? First I googled for Sonoma County, (where I’m from) but decided to go larger haha. I know the Duggars have quite a few. But they’re not Cali
If I put the google analytics code in my website, and then continually preview the local html file (which has the google analytics code in it), will that register to google visits each time I preview my site before posting to the web?
Won’t it execute the piece of google code each time I preview my page?
All I want to do is this:
Display a certain link depending from which site a user came from. Does anyone know any code I can use to do this with Google Analytics?
EX: If a user came from yahoo answers, he will be shown a link that says: Free pet food. If someone came from youtube then that vistor will see a different link in that same position that says: Free Milk
I really want to become a equine specialty vet. I have competitively shown AQHA shows throughout my childhood. Since the industry is so important to me I want a career that will still allow me to stay involved, so I would want to do something like large animal vet with a specialty in performance horses and helping show horses. I’m curious as to what schools have good vet programs especially those specializing in horses or large animal. Any other helpful suggestions or information about becoming a vet in this field would be great!
Thanks!
I am creating a website based business and want to do some research on which keywords get the most clicks and how much I will be paying per click for the sponsored ads for google and yahoo. Is there a website where I can type in a keyword and it tells me how many people type in the keyword for google and/or yahoo? If so, please let me know the link to the site. Thanks!!
What is big data? and is hadoop is the only toll to handle bigdata problems??
I just setup Google Analytics on my site ( within the last day). The data just started surfacing. I am wondering how long I need to wait to get an accurate assessment from it?
Thanks
Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance provide this data for recent days but not for weeks, months or years ago. Are there any other freely available sources and, if not, what are the options for purchasing such data and how much will it cost?
Hey everyone, I need a research data of the number of authors (independent or published) are there. I need this for my upcoming business plan so I can have some investment for my business..
Please help me, I’m still trying to find it on Google, but if anyone have the data please provide it to me.
I am sure that those pictures are belong to more than 3 years.
How can I get a real time (recently token) picture?
Does anyone know how Google Places (Google Maps) works…? My company never shows up with an icon (as a place/landmark) on Google Maps, though we’ve been in our small town for 15 years. This is extremely frustrating to us – we want to have a professional-looking little icon over our company, just like the JiffyMart, Storage Solutions, and animal hospital around us.
What are the icons based on? How do you either create or get listed with one? I have tried sending a data report, error report, etc., to Google Maps, but I wondered if anyone here would be able to lend some insight.
Ask away if you have any questions. I’m monitoring this post.
In London England, how much does a psychologist make per year?
It was significant enough for Apple to block it, Google to get royally upset about that block, and consumers to get mad that they couldn’t get it.
But what exactly would Google Voice as an iPhone/iPod Touch app be able to do that’s so special that it warrants all the fuss?
why all people , news channels and blogs are saying that htc ,SAMSUNG and lg will stop to made android phones while htc and Samsung ceo’s said we will committed to android, why people are saying this today on a news channel larry page said people are jealous with our success. what is truth one side all manufacturer said we will continue to manufacturing android smartphone and we will boost android production other side all blogs are saying the htc and Samsung will not make any android phone
According to NASA GISS, May 2010 was the hottest May on record (tied with 2008). It’s also the hottest Jan-May on record. And 12-month running average temperature record was broken once again.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/2010vs2005+1998.pdf
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Au57vongYoiAdEQwRWdLT0lRWjFhNGY3NnpKb1J1d0E&hl=en#gid=3
According to UAH, it was the 2nd-hottest May on record.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures
On the other hand, the NASA GISS global temperature has declined by a tenth of a degree each of the past 2 months as the El Nino cycle winds down. But due to the 6-month lag before changes in ENSO are reflected by the satellites, UAH temps have remained high and stable.
Most models predict ENSO will remain in neutral conditions for the rest of the year, but some predict it will enter a La Nina phase by fall.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
So let’s get some prediction updates. Will there be a new global temperature record for the calendar year 2010 to go with the numerous 12-month running average records? If so, in which data set(s)?
Correction – the first sentence should say tied with 1998, not 2008.
“Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz’s estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.”
I have to write a paper relating Schwartz’s theory to motivation. Help! Any ideas???
i created a Google authenticator for gw2 login and got the barcode of gw2 website after i logged in then scanned it, and the codes were working fine. However i reset my iphone and when i came to access my gw2 login it wanted the generated code, so i went to my phone to find i was logged out the account and the code was no longer being generated, i went on the google website to get sent a text message with the key to log in so i could start getting the generated codes to log in gw2. How ever the generated code dose not work with my gw2 account! How on earth am i to access my gw2 account again??? it asks for the code but hte ones i am getting generated aren’t working.
so about a year so far i’ve had it disabled. It’s an on and off thing for some reason google thinks its a good idea to provide what they believe is best for you, i however find it really annoying. I’ve had my own queries and my own data typed into google but now it seems google has enabled it once again. In the past i could disable it but now for some reason i cant. Instead of it being an easy access like they said its become an annoyance so if anyone know how to disable it. Ive tried disabling it but nothing happened. It still gives me the query suggestions.
what is the function to use to make calculations based on scenarios? Would the function include multiplying, adding, and such? How should it be set up on google spreadsheets? Any articles, or how to guides?
Hello. I have to get certain opinions for my law class:
Should Web search engines such as Yahoo and Google honor requests by the Chinese government to reveal the identities of political dissenters? Is it better for the companies to operate in China and provide as much information access as possible or to stand on moral principle and risk being shut down? Why do you feel this way?
Thanks so much for your responses!
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