Hi Google. It’s been great between us, hasn’t it? You’ve always provided great research and measurement tools to support a great search engine, and in return, I’ve done my best to create quality material on the web. Inbound marketers and Google working together, we’ve been improving the Internet one quality web page after another for a while now.
But lately you’ve been doing a few things that make me think you don’t want inbound marketers to create excellent website content anymore. Perhaps you’re just in it to maintain your high prestige now and don’t care about us like you once did. I wanted to drop you a note about few thoughts on inbound marketers’ minds.
SSL Search Sleight of Hand
When you made SSL search the default, we all cringed as you justified hiding organic keyword traffic data in web analytics tools in the name of user privacy. While I also value user privacy, a few things about what you said didn’t add up.
For example, in a recent SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday (about six minutes in), Rand noted to Microsoft’s Duane Forrester that Bing does a good job handling user privacy for keyword traffic in web analytics tools where Google will now be sending (not provided) instead. They’re not considering any changes as drastic as you are. Why did it have to be that way, Google?
You announced that 10 percent would be the norm, and cushioned the announcement by rolling the change out slowly. Now, some sites are reporting between 20 to 50 percent of their organic search traffic as (not provided) instead of the actual keywords since you flipped the switch in early November. Personally, I'm up to about 15%.
Meanwhile, AdWords customers get every bit of keyword data, personalized URLs, and all. What’s up with that? Does that mean that privacy matters unless someone is willing to pay to remove it? Are you aware of how obvious this is to people? It just seems a little evil, and I thought you were against that sort of thing. Just sayin’.
Multi-Channel Second Fiddle
When you announced Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF) in Google Analytics, I was thrilled to get a level of attribution reporting on the channels that are sending traffic to my site. It was neat to see how social media and organic search supported and assisted the goals of my websites.
But then I found that while we can segment and group traffic by channel (e.g., search, social, etc.), Google Analytics users can’t organize MCFs by organic landing page or sections of a website. How am I supposed to see how people interact with the sections of my website as they make their way through their buying process over multiple visits?
Again, you allowed us to group segments and channel groupings by AdWords landing page, but not by organic landing page, according to Nick and Avinash of Web Analytics TV (about 5:15 minutes in). Apparently, Google, you only pull in AdWords data for that feature. Of course. Inbound marketers are second fiddle again.
What Gives, Google?
I’ve heard a lot of rumblings lately that perhaps all of these recent indiscretions on inbound marketers are leading up to a suite of offerings for us in the new Google Analytics Premium. For a tiny investment of only six figures a year, I too can have my data back in addition to a person to call and talk to? It doesn’t seem like it’s a fair exchange, especially given how much we’ve given you while you were still up-and-coming.
Before Google Analytics, you knew what happened within Google search, and you saw how sites linked to each other, but you didn’t yet know how people behaved when they were on websites. You needed our data to weave together a complete picture of the web.
And so you bought Urchin, and we all signed up and gave you our data, confident that it would help you make the Internet a better place for all of us. Now I’m not sure it was such a great idea.
It feels like you got what you needed from us and now you’re going to make the collective “us” pay to continue enjoying the benefits of what we thought was a mutually beneficial relationship. Some may say that’s what we get for using a free product, but I guess I expected more from you, Google.
I want my data back. I want parity with PPC. And, I would kindly like the “&limit=N” feature back too. I miss the old Google that believed in democracy of information and in doing the right thing. Please remember all the good times we’ve had together, and reconsider some of your recent neglect of inbound marketers. Thanks for listening.
My name is Mike King and approve this message.
Free The Data!
Joining the cause Mike!
FREE THE DATA!
With Both of you, FREE THE DATA!
In many interviews Larry Page had said that "their main goal is to make the Internet free and better and everybody should get the information without paying unnecessary." Now it seems that this statement is not more valid for future! Now Big G has got almost everything from us and He can do anything in anyways with those stuffs and we have to just crave for that! :( that's horrible!
Nice letter.. i wish some serious folks read this letter and feel sorrowful for their idiotic steps taken recently to make big amount of money. I have learnt that Every Big thing has some dead ends and everything gets replaced by another thing e.g. In early days, people moved to Firefox from Netscape, people moved to Google from Yahoo.....so i am just waiting for the NEXT future Search engine or any other media giving tough competition to G. (well that's my emotion just flooded out.. i am sorry for that :)
Thanks for the Letter!
Therein lies the key.
The name at the top is no longer Larry Page and the downhill slide began from the moment that change occurred.
The "do no evil" catch cry clearly did not originate from the current CEO. That, I think is the real tragedy of the situation ... clearly the rules of the previous game no longer apply.
It is time for realism and pragmatism. The message for us as an industry seems to be "expect nothing, question everything, stand on your own two feet".
It's time for this community to pull out the stops and it could actually turn out to be a wild ride! ;)
Well said, Ajay. I saw Google's Michal Lorenc speak nearly a year ago about why he was passionate about his work at Google. This is what he said:
"My personal story, I grew up in Poland. I came to the U.S. in '92. I remember very well the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the change, just getting access to democracy. For me, the promise of the Internet, democratizing content, allowing everybody to access everything and make up their own minds rather than being told what to think, what to do is an extremely powerful tool."
Democracy of information is a powerful tool indeed.
Yesterday (not provided) was up to 48% of my client's keyword data. Absolutely ridiculous.
JEEZ LOUISE!
We're seeing less than 1% at this stage.
I don't agree with this sentiment: "It doesn’t seem like it’s a fair exchange, especially given how much we’ve given you while you were still up-and-coming."
Google doesn't owe us anything, but I am frustrated too. I, perhaps, more than most: I started one site, and really pushed so that people would want to connect to their Google account. How am I rewarded? By about 80% of my traffic being (not provided). Thanks Google, most of my users are hidden because I pushed your product!
Needless to say, we're pushing people to Facebook connect now. It seems to work better anyway.
It seems that the people who promote Google (internet marketers, bloggers, media, and news agencies) are being hurt the most. What will happen if the whole media industry, and the whole business community starts to promote another competitor? It didn't take Google very long to become #1, but that can happen with another search engine too.
Don't get me worong, we LOVE Google, we hope they make good choices to help internet publishers! But I don't think they are making choices to encourage "fans". It seems their chocies are, at best, making people dissapoineted.
Google, I still appreicate you, but please reconsider some of your recent decisions.
I work with Dentists from all over the US. These guys represent small business. Most of them only see 20 - 30 visitors each day to their sites so the data is already limited. About 50% of that traffic is branded. (not provided) data is now the #2 or #3 category for every client I have. Analytics are basicly pointless at this point. SMB's take it on the chin again. Thanks Google. Well played. Idiots. The spin Google trys to put on why the data is still provided in Adwords is a slap in my face as well as the clients I represent. I guess I have stupid written accross my forehead.
Well I guess 50% of your (not provided) keywords are probably branded aswell then. And with only 20-30 visits per day you're not exactly dealing with a lot of data. Have you setup Google Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics? You can get the majority of the data you need in there.
Here is a good post about how you can gather some of the data back via a Google Analytics hack - https://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8342-how-to-steal-some-not-provided-data-back-from-google
But it does come with risks at the same time.
Thanks for sharing, James. I enjoyed that ecounsultancy quite a bit. Creating a filter to show the landing page instead of the (not provided) would definitely help bring back some of the insights. I also appreciated Avinash Kaushik's recent post with tons of other work-arounds to the problem: https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/google-secure-search-keyword-data-analysis/.
I think SEOs and analytics folks in general share this can-do attitude, and it's great to be part of such a positive bunch of professionals.
Yeah within our search team we have a few full time analytics guys so we are always looking for new insights and ideas in the space!
I think you are preaching to the choir, one of my clients is seeing about 7.5% "not provided" rate. It's not as crazy as others I've spoken with but still - that's a lot of data to lose.
Great post! The sad part is that we as a community can rant off or write open letters as much as we want, it won't change Google's policy. We did help them to get where they are, but now they are all about the money which means pushing other ad networks out of business and making AdWords as profitable as possible.
We will just have to adjust as we always do!
Hi Josh, you gave vent to a lot of people's feelings!
You can actually still export N rows of data - this is from https://www.dbdmedia.co.uk/blog/seo-news/google-analytics-1-%E2%80%93-how-to-export-more-than-500-rows-from-the-new-system/
"In the NEW Google Analytics, the “rowCount%3D” is essentially the way the URL tells the system how many rows to show at a time. If you change the end number (e.g. 25) to something like 10,000, Google Analytics will display this information. The page should refresh to show a maximum of 10,000 rows and will allow you to export this number via the export tool."
It's actually better than the old method, because all rows will actually display within Google Analytics (if I remember correctly the old version would still only display up to 500, and the N rows would only display when exported)
Oh this is wonderful.. everyone in the industry know how important the keyword data was and this was one of the powerful way people design their future content strategies BUT what Big G was getting out if it? The tag of the ‘democratic leader of the Internet arena’, well with the points you mentioned this is pretty clear that it’s not privacy, that Google consider its some cash the Big G want!
I strongly agree that it seems like G got what it need from us and now... Wops! But i still have the hope that G will consider this letter of love that user still have with it and bring the changes that are in favour of users as well as for the Big G.
Excellent post Jibraaten, it seems that it contains voice of majority. My clients are also struck badly by (not provided) thing and its occupying 12% to 18% of my keywords referral data pie.
In all fairness to Google, &limit=N was more like a hack, however there is an alternate solution to that - https://www.convonix.com/blog/web-analytics/how-to-export-more-than-500-results-in-new-version-of-google-analytics/
Having said that as far as {Not Provided} is concerned the % value is just going on increasing. Its only a matter of time before everyone uses personalized search.
I guess even Google knows that and just wants to monetize everything which is really Sad. A typical "BIG" corporate attitude which will eventually lead to it's own downfall.
- Sajeet
Good point, Sajeet. Still though, it was handy in a pinch. I've beent transitioning to as many API-based tools as I can to avoid the data limits in the GA interface.
Jl,
I'd love to know which API-based tools you transitioned to and what results/experiences have been.
Ahh, Google Primium? I never say it's a better stpe from google; even more than 70% traffic for big G from Yahoo! So i think there are nothing any thing free for we little guys?
Any ways we have go through :)
This problem is self-inflicted by everyone who used GA. It was clear a long time ago why Google was offering this tool for free. Now they finally lifted the final piece of the curtain. Google is powerful enough at this point to pull this off. Maybe this is a wake-up call to many webmasters.
I pulled GA from my website over 2 years ago and used other products and this worked just fine. If everyone would do the same Google loses a lot of visibility on the Internet instantly. Yes, they would still be able to track several things, but overall it would take away a lot of their data grooming capabilities.
Google does not care about online marketers and small businesses and small webmasters. They have reached their goal to rule the Internet and whatever they promote as "good for the visitor" really means it's good for Google in the first place.
Oh and Google Analytics Premium...? seriously. You can now buy better data from Google? Doesn't that just make it even more difficult for the little guy? I didn't think Google was about that...
I'm not bothered by the core concept of a paid GA option so much as by the idea that it's either free or HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars (!) So, basically - GA Premium is a product for huge corporations and no one else. Of course, Google is pretty clear about its customer service model. I've had $50K/month AdWords accounts that didn't get reps until we begged and pleaded. In what other world can you have a $600K/year customer and not so much as give them an email address to ask questions?
I think the issue that they fast is the sheer quantity of customers they have. If they offered 'good' customer service that was in the price range of a large percentage of users they would have to hire and train tens of thousands of employees. Why would they make that jump when they've been so successful without it? And when the competition is so weak?
I just always had this image of Google as someone who helped to create and even playing field where anyone could put up content... and whoever had the best content would succeed. This move just makes me question their stance on that. It's just way too close to buying organic rankings. How do we know they’re not going to favor these clients who give them $150,000/yr in the search results. And why wouldn’t they? I’m sure they will have to do some research on each company that pays for this service and that research will allow them to provide a quality score to the company (I’m sure they won’t approve spam websites).
I Agree 100%! Depending on the site, if you have a small niche website, even if the traffic is massive, you can still see the landing of pages with (not provided) entrie and figure out the hidden data. Anyway this was one of the most disgusting moves from Google - Hello, Google! What happened to the SMBs? How they are supposed to pay you 15K per month just for Analytics? Oh, yeah... If they do that, there won't be budget for PPC!
Great post! You wrote what many of us are thinking! But i am surprised? Not really, it's pretty much like they did with their PPC clients, we helped them build the frame, once that was ready, many got kicked out and accounts closed... That is part of a monopoly.
Hmm well isn't this someone expected with the search landscape changing. Frankly for myself I started putting more effort into the social media reach and have been measuring the amount of traffic via social media and mobile as well and seeing ways to improve the traffic from those sites. Google still remains the #1 referrer for most sites I work on, but it's always Google, Twitter, Facebook and then after that it depends at some points I have stumbelupon first which in turn really makes me think how important are those keywords these days?
With the progression of google plus it's only going to get worse - I'm seeing about 15% of traffic getting the not provided in the results - it depends on the market as well, at the moment the more technical sites I look after have been worse impacted.
I can see it from Google's point of view - there are running costs to Analytics, but it must have made them a fortune since it's been launched, I suppose from their p&l point of view that fortune isn't massively attributable.
A good marketer doesn't sell. They see value in people and companies that other people do not. The hard sale is a thing of the past. Today's professional qualifies their customers by asking the right questions and online the relevancy factor was determined by web analytics. Google's now saying you can't see that unless you pay them to use Adwords and that even those Kw queries will likely be stripped fro analytics. I don't see how Google could possible hope to make the user experience better for customers and searchers by blinding companies from user intent. It's just another one way conversation (something Google is very used to).
I can certainly see how this is disconcerting to many. I see a large percentage of my organic traffic blocked (20-40%) since October, though I am almost certain that half of those numbers are for brand.
For me being new to SEO, it has not had as great an impact since I never saw the numbers before. Now that I am getting into the analytics it really sucks. But, what can you do. Sites like SEOmoz are teaching us how to do good clean, organic seo. Google makes no money if all could rank organically. We want to be ranked by Google, we have to fit in our place. Unfortunate as this may be it is what it is.
I would love for someone to start a purely organic seo search engine and have a way to let the search engine get compensated without having to clutter the space with ads all over the top and right side of the search page. But, I know not of this engine. I am sure it exists, but I have not heard of it and it may have little dominance at this time.
We've all been content with Google's monopoly until now because it was so convenient to optimize for just one search engine, and they gave us so many great freebies. But I think that what's happening now shows that it's time for a competing search engine. The Googleopoly is unhealthy, and puts too much power over information in the hands of one organization.
I'm going to start using Bing for search. It will be hard, since I really do love Google, but Google needs some healthy competition. I call on others to do the same.
Google offered lot of tools for internet users of their usage without cost. Now a days Google dominate for search industry. so that, it will be done like this enhancements. As of SEO, should be affected by SSL Search can't get organic search keywords. Google will understand practical difficulties from this!
Nice letter to Google!
A thought provoking letter. Thankyou, Sir.
One query, Is it showing only for .com or been released to all over? I'm getting this (not provided) stats in my UK clients analytics report too.
Thanks.
for me [not provided] data is really low yet. But I think it's growing a lot.
thanks for sharing this: FREE THE DATA - even if we don't pay! :)
You make several great points. Hopefully, we see additional modifications soon.
Well said. Bring back the old moral Google... I liked him far more!
How many more beatings from Google do we have to take before enough people wake up and realise what some of us have known for a few years - Google is too powerful and needs to be stopped before its too late. It's a nice idea that something new could come along to challenge them and replace them, but it's just fantasy. They are too hard-wired into every neuk and cranny now, they have fingers in every pie imaginable. The general public have no idea what's going on and it will take a massive movement to make them aware or even care.
I just finished In The Plex by Steven Levy. It's a good read, but sometimes feels like a really long job application to Google. But okay, Google apparently gets around 1 million applications a year, so you need to do something special these days.
An interesting point from the book is, that Google never created Analytics to give a great analytics product. They created it to give insights into the value of AdWords. The only reason they made it free to everyone is that oit would be too much work to make a payment system (sounds a bit weird to be honest, but lets assume Levy is right on this one). This explains a couple of things:
1. (not provided). Google never really cared about giving us free data in Analytics (or other web analytics tools for that matter).
2. Analytics Premium. Google will now sell an enterprise analytics package + customer support. This might have been the plan all along.
Thanks Josh for writing this clear and concise post. There have been a number of Google headlines over the last few months which have raised a few question marks. One that has annoyed me and quite a few others is their treatment of AdWords API developers in September - turning off API accounts (many who have been paying users for long periods of time) without any prior warning or notification beforehand. There were a number of SEO related businesses which used (or even depended) on this service. Their communication afterwards to the API community was far from ideal. As a business owner it's really questioned my use of Google products in general.
That seems pretty shady. It doesn't take machine learning to to figure out how wrong that is to do to your customers. Perhaps Google needs to ignore the data on this one and use common sense instead.
Great comments, everyone!
Great post, Josh.
I'm absolutely agree. Google has reached its status thanks to people, and now pretends to turn its back on us. That's not fair, G.
I hope people react and face the Google's offence.
Is there any paper to sign in?
Danny Sullivan actually created a petition. Tons of folks have signed it: https://keywordtransparency.com/google-petition
It would be cool to see all the friends of Moz sign it too.
Signed.
Everyone should sign this and if you use Timely or Hootsuite, or Buffer set this up daily to blast your followers to sign as well
I need to buy Simple SEO & Social MonitoringMade to make my site is: thietkewebsg.com. What can I do to buy? Thanks
The point for me is that many things that Google has been doing in recent years has been to improve users experience, not just on Google, but once they've left the Google site and landed on our websites.
Your site's too slow? Then Google may demote you in their search rankings and send you less traffic. Sorry, but you're not offering a good user experience, therefore Google will punish you with lower rankings and therefore less traffic.
By removing large chunks of this data Google are impairing Website owners ability to improve their user experience and give their customers what they are looking for.
And it's not about security. Everything Google has done in recent times has all been about increasing their already massive profits. Look at the way they massage Google suggest results as a prime example of this.
Wow. I guess I needed to get that off my chest. I feel better now. Great Post JL! You described the frustration we are all feeling and the questions we all have perfectly. Thanks and sorry for my lame rant everyone! Maybe I need therapy? ; )
Cory - I can't tell you how many times I had to redo parts of this post to avoid sounding like a ranting fool (still not sure I accomplished that). I personally haven't had such an adverse emotional reaction to something Google's done. Perhaps that's just part of "growing up" in the SEO community.
I think you did a great job of de-ranting - it seems the "do no evil" philosophy continues to head towards the back of the bus. Will be interesting to see if this generates any response...
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This is going to be an unfashionable point of view, but maybe people should spend less time poring over their analytics and more time creating content, working on their social presence and earning backlinks.
Checking analytics once a week is fine, and in any case, when you look at things from a weekly perspective, it's easy to see where the big trends are, even if some of the data is blocked - simply assume the blocked data distributes in much the same way the unblocked data.
Even better, get yourself a Google webmaster tools account and log in once a week to check the terms G is ranking you for. That is the real meat, not poring over some obscure long tails for hours on end.
Although I agree you can pour over analytics far too much - and the new real time function makes this even easier - but I'd suggest checking it more than once a week, I try and look once or twice a day for the sites that are making money as it's important that you are able to react quickly enough to changes. IMO once a week and you could lose the momentum you're trying to gain through your all your marketing activities.
I could be wrong.. but I think that Google's actions are pretty much saying: "it doesn't matter what keywords people are using to get to your website". This made me think.. does it really matter in Google's eyes?
From Google's point of view I'm not too sure that it does. Websites provide content to users and Google basically figures out what the content means and ranks websites accordingly. Does the website need to know which keywords were used by searchers to get to the website? Shouldn't those keywords technically be obvious? What sort of benifit would someone searching google get with Google providing this information? After all that's who Google is really concerned about.
I'm upset about missing this information as well. I just thought I'd share what Google's point of view might be.
It matters for paying customers or non paying customersm, this is the concern for me.
Google is concered about profits. everything else is public relations. I am happy with that, but I dont believe saying the are converned about privacy, yet willing to give the information for a profit is honest. If they want to make more money by keeping certain data for paying customers they should say so.
Lets remember these are the people that read your mail so they can make money tailoring ads for you.
I completely agree. I think I was missing the point that they're removing the data from "free" users and selling it to the paid users.
If Google has the ability to give those paying users the data and at the same time they hide that data to those who don't pay... and theres no additional cost to get the data (all they have to do is pretty much turn it on for free users)... that's pretty unethical in my opinion.
I have no problem with them selling a "Premium" version of GA. But they shouldn't give additional raw data to these users. Everyone should have access to the same raw data; the Premium GA should just have unique and really useful tools which display the same data in a different way.
By only providing this information to users who pay $150k / year and at the same time controlling 65%+ of search traffic... they're essentially creating an monopoly and making it even more difficult for the "little guys" to compete with the major companies... who already have extensive resources.
"What sort of benifit would someone searching google get with Google providing this information?"
The benefit is that web admins can learn how to better tailor their sites to tangent queries that somehow lead visitors to their page, which in turn improves the overall web. For example, on a music-related site sometimes I somehow get hits from searches for "is [musician] married" even though my post about that musician said nothing about their marriage status.
So this means that this visitor searched the term, clicked on my site because s/he thought it might have the answer, and since it did not have the answer they must have gone back and clicked on another site. However, if I know the answer, I can edit my text to include that information, and any future visitor who stumbles on my site with the same query will now need to visit fewer websites than before. Voila - better hits for me, better experience for the user, better appreciation for Google serving up good results... all in all: a better Internet.
Can't do that if I don't know what my visitors were searching for. It doesn't stop me from continuing to produce good content, but it hurts my efforts to make existing content even better.
"on a music-related site sometimes I somehow get hits from searches for "is [musician] married" even though my post about that musician said nothing about their marriage status."
By directing users to your website who are looking for information about a musician's marriage status when in fact you have no such information... isn't Google failing in a sense? Your article is about A and Google is sending you users that are looking for B.
Your point is well taken and I have considered it when I posted my comment. I just thought that Google provides other tools to figure out with users are searching.. such as their Adwords keyword tool.
I just think that by Google not showing which keywords users used... it actually ends up discouraging unwanted black hat SEO stuff. While I’m sure a lot of people (especially SEOmoz readers) use this data for purely good, some people abuse this data and end up writing articles that are unnatural and not best for the user.
Regardless, I don’t agree with what Google is doing. They should never give people something and then take it away only to resell it at a premium. It’s just bad business.
Yes, it is a failure by Google, but by knowing the keywords I have the potential to fix that failure for Google and creaet a win-win-win for me, Google, and my visitor. But I also definitely agree that a lot of people abuse that data for "black hat SEO stuff." Maybe Google thinks that they won't really hurt people who already know how to create good content for the keywords they're expecting (e.g. when Google doesn't fail), but they will give a big blow to the super-optimizer grey/black hats throwing up low-value-add sites for cash cows from Google's own ad system.... *shrug*
Well said. I think Google just created a nice opportunity for another vendor or startup to offer the organic keywords for free (or very low cost) and benefit from a big new clients stream.
Thank your for opening the door to a new ecosystem.
That was my reaction as well at first, Martin, but it's a Google change, not a Google Analytics change. That said, all web analytics tools are equally affected by the (not provided) issue.
I see now... I initially thought it was Google Analytics who was no longer displaying keywords. While it's really Google the search engine who's no longer providing the search referral keywords by choice.
Pretty wise (and Evil) way to get paid analytics customers while keeping and using their dominant position. I'm now wondering how obvious Analytics Premium make the searcg referal keywords!
Nicely done. Google wants us to make our sites and clients' sites better but to do so we now have to pay them. After Adwords, Google found a new way to press lemons some more.
It's not really evil, as marketers we are considered "evil" they are actually producing something that the majority of their customers will appreciate - secure search, security, peace of mind.
Brilliant and terrible at the same time.
It's mine, I so am going to start one... anyone wanna coach me on how to get the data? LOL
Sorry folks, but I think that Google owes nothing to us. They gave us superb tool for free and it's still free and it provides much information. I can't see that this impact is so big that it can actually ruin your work or bussines.
When it comes to privacy, sorry but I don't like the idea that every search I made is visible to others and I'm sure neither of you folks so it's very controversial to discuss about it. On the other hand, people are obsessed with their "privacy" more than ever, so Google gets another plus point in eyes of "non SEO" related people.
Google is a big corporation in a world lead by money, so it's naive to expect that they will work for free and satisfy every single user on the planet. Like I said before, G gave us an awesome product and we should be thankful for that, instead of overreacting.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
This is nothing to do with privacy, Google are just using that as a cover up. Nobody but you knows what you are searching for, Analytics users simply know that somebody on this planet searched for your term, they don't know it was you.
Privacy? come on, this has nothing to do with privacy. Google doesn't care about privacy any more than Facebook does.
This has nothing to do with privacy. If it did, Google wouldn't divulge that information to its paying customers. It has to do with Google trying to upsell people to their premium products.
Not that there is anything wrong with this. They are a business, after all. But privacy concerns are a non factor.
Hi guys, I don't often post on SEO Moz, but felt I had to leave a comment.
Where does Google say Google Analytics Premium has the data you are talking about? As far as I can tell Google Analytics Premium is just a bit more complex and since most people on here don't have a clue how to deal with losing 10% of their keyword data, I doubt they would find Google Analytics Premium much help.
Google Analytics was created to help get them more money, not so much more information - they are still offering Google Analytics and they have done a great job at improving it. I think its a great tool and its helped me so much over the past 5 years.
The reason why you can get keyword data for AdWords and not Google organic is that Google AdWords is already setup to pass the referrer through SSL using the gclid - Google Organic hasn't got an equivalent, but I wouldn't rule out them including that for Google Analytics users in future - so we may see a return possibly.
I agree with what you are saying about landing pages, I actually looked at the same report looking for the same thing to see the customer journey from awareness to purchase.
David - There's nothing written anywhere that GA Premium will unlock your hidden data. It's just speculation on my part, and it could very well be wrong.
I hope you're right, and organic keyword data makes a return to GA.
Stupid Google!
While this post has strong entertainment value and some decent supporting facts, I still only see one thing. GA is a free service, people are complaining that it still isn't good enough, and ends with the notion that free clients should be treated the same as paid clients.
Sorry folks, developers cost money, as do servers and energy to run said servers.
And anyone who complains about being addicted to jr. level analytics platforms like GA must not be old enough to remember the 80's where crack was first handed out for free, then people got addicted and had to pay for it.
Only a few options here. 1) deal with the highs and lows of a free service 2) build your own system and run it off the weblogs or 3) step up to a big boy analytics service!
JackieOh,
You're right. I knew I would hate myself as soon as I hit the post button. Ug. Rambling & Ranting is so fun until the next day, a good nights rest, or even some lunch. Thanks for poping my balloon. ;)
Couldn't have said it better myself :)
JackieOh - you certainly do make a good point. Features like organic attribution are pretty resource-intensive to develop. While I certainly don't feel like we're entitled to those tools, I've always held Google in a high regard. Within that perception was the idea that Google supports information democracy, and they'd develop features equally for organic and cpc marketers. Maybe it's time to re-think that definintion.
On another note, the SSL search issue affects all web analytics tools, even your fancy schmancy ones. No self-built systems or "big boy analytics services" are capable of giving you back that 20-50% of your organic keyword data. No doubt you're probably just as frustrated with that as us humble free analytics users.
Is anyone else using Site Catalyst or WebTrends experiencing this issue? I manage clients on both platforms and have not seen a change in organic attribution reporting.
Or maybe it talks to my clients audiences who aren't avid igoogle fans, therefore not logged in.
As Jlbraaten stated, this in't a GA issue - it affects every analytics platform. Additionally, fans of iGoogle are probably the minority of 'logged-in' users. Users of any Google products like GMail, Google Docs (both free and corporate), Google Reader, and eventually Android users as well will fall into this category.
Of course the audience of your site will determine how much keyword data you lose, but Google account holders will likely only increase so the problem will continue to get worse over time.
Again, I'm hoping someone can actually show me that this truly isn't just a GA issue, not just tell me it is. I don't see it happening on my platforms, is anyone else?
No offense to you Brian, or to Jlbratten, but I'm not that trusting of what is being said. I believe what my analytics platforms tell me, vs a blog post any day. And just for the record, Jlbraaten didn't really state this issue, he regurgi-stated (I made that word up, yes) what Rand Fiskin stated in his whiteboard session.
If I've learned anything about SEO marketers, their strongest skill set is fear mongering! Ask them when exactly a SEO effort will rank a page and its "oh, it can take 3-12 weeks depending on ____ engine, and then maybe." but if I want to make a copy change they don't agree with, it's all "that will drop the site traffic 35% this quarter for sure!"
As a 25+ year veteran of marketing, I believe in facts and figures. So please, someone show me this is actually affecting the SiteCatalyst platform!
It's not a GA issue it's a Google issue. All analytics programs will have the same issue as Google is no longer passing the data. I am running Omniture Site Catalyst and "Keyword Unavailable" rose from 1-2% last month to 14% (55K+ visits) in November. Here is more information about it . Again, this is not a GA issue but a Google issue and all analytics packages are impacted