Update to the Update (7/2/14): Great news! The Landing Pages feature is now available to campaigns that track any one of the Google English-language search engines (identified by "en-XX" in Campaign Settings); it's no longer restricted to en-US. Keep in mind you'll also need to connect your Google Analytics account to take advantage of the reporting.
Update: The Landing Pages feature is only available to campaigns that track Google US rankings. We are currently building compatibility for other Google English-language domains. You can add Google US on the Campaign Settings page of Moz Analytics by selecting 'United States (English) en-US'
There's been a lot of talk about what (not provided) means for SEO practitioners, with Mozzers weighing in on broader implications and alternative strategies.
When it comes down to it, we're stuck with a frustrating predicament that's forcing us to change our process. Activities like keyword gap analysis, editorial brainstorming, basic rank tracking, and even SEM planning have become harder to execute.
More fundamentally, we're having a tough time answering simple questions like:
"Which keywords are sending traffic to my site(s)?"
"Which keyword opportunities am I not leveraging? Where are the gaps?"
So where do we go from here? Many of you have already changed your reporting strategies to reflect the new SEO reality. Focusing on topics, landing pages, and broader content strategies is a solid pivot, and we'll be working hard at Moz to support those efforts.
But we also recognize that keyword-level data remains an important signal for many SEOs.
With that in mind, we're happy to announce a new report in Moz Analytics that will help answer some of those (not provided) questions.
Quick Note: The new feature is only available to Moz Analytics campaigns connected to Google Analytics. If you're using the old version of our software (the SEOmoz PRO app) and want to take advantage, be sure to switch your campaigns over to Moz Analytics and connect GA.
The Landing Pages report
TL;DR We've grouped your tracked keywords by landing page and correlated them with a new metric, Estimated Traffic Share. Use the report to determine which keywords are your strongest traffic drivers.
In the new data view, your tracked keywords are grouped by landing page and correlated with both ranking position and visits.
The Estimated Traffic Share metric is our best guess at the percentage of visits each keyword contributes. The value is based on a combination of landing page traffic, keyword ranking position, estimated search volume, and SERP click-through-rates.
Let's look at a quick example from Rand's blog:
We know that Rand's evergreen post about stock options at startups received 170 organic visits. We also know it ranks decently for a couple of relevant phrases including "startup stock options."
Based on ranking position and search volume, however, it's a safe bet we're missing at least a few of the most important keyword targets. A peek at the Opportunities tab confirms our assumption:
Tracking phrases like "understanding stock starting a company" provides additional insight into the post's organic footprint and gives back some of the basic data (not provided) took away.
Sometimes you'll see the opposite: Estimated Traffic Shares that sum to a big chunk of the landing page total.
In those situations you can make an educated guess that the primary traffic drivers are being tracked.
Quick Note: This is obvious but worth stating: in order to get the most out of the new report you need to add tracked keywords to your Moz Analytics campaigns. Not only that, you'll probably want to add a healthy selection of terms to gain the most insight. For inspiration, take a peek at the Opportunities tab.
Back to the big picture
SEOs know how to adapt. The increase in (not provided) isn't the first time we've lost a valuable data source, and it's probably not the last. With the Landing Pages report and other Moz Analytics updates, we'll do our best to address the changing search landscape.
Have a look at the latest release and share your thoughts. As always, if you have any insights or feedback feel free to shoot a message to our extra-helpful Help Team (help (at) moz.com) or sound off in the comments.
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Thanks to our data source partners
Big thanks to the team at Grepwords and their amazing data for helping to make this update happen.
Jay - the more I play with the feature in my campaigns, the more I like it. About time Moz started helping us marketers get back the data Google stole!
BTW - I made this quick visual with some tips for how I'm using the data. I figured it might help some other folks too.
Thanks for the helpful image, Rand!
I was skeptical when I first heard mention of this tool, but the more I look into it and think about it, the more confidence I have in it being helpful internally. It's not a good consistent KPI to report on due to some nebulous complexities that clients might not understand, but it's GREAT for internal analyses and insights!
Hi! You know, SEO monitor App launched the same feature in October, last year. You can check it out at seomonitor.com. Cheers!
Holy sh*t guys, well done.
Thank you for the visual, Rand. It complements everything Jay just illustrated in his article.
Very happy to see this go live - I was playing with some small accounts this morning, and it's nice to see data and insights even for those. I'm already seeing some places where I need to fill in the blanks on keywords I'm tracking and writing around.
Note to everyone - if you're not seeing much data, check on the "Include Pages Without Estimated Visits". It'll give you a sense of where you can start filling in data.
This went live for me yesterday. Huzzah!!! Awesome feature!
Guys, this is exactly what I expect from Moz and the tools suite. This adaptive nature of your suite of products. As soon as I saw this feature I got a pleasant smile on my face. THANK YOU!
Woohoo! I was hoping this was the release!
What an awesome feature! Congrats to the team. This is hugely valuable to help me find new keywords that I should be tracking.
Finally, (provided)!
Finally (provided) ...Cute
Am I the only one to feel like Data companies and corporations such as Google are hiding valuable data from us (Seo cie ans Freelance) on ordre to maintain us paying for SEM and PPC?
Acfually, why are we still not all using OpenSource seo and analytics tools?
You know the thing is that everything is paid now. Every giant does that. Example: if you have facebook page where you were collecting your fans for years and now you have to pay to show them your messages and posts. This sucks! But this is how it ends up when some corporation becomes almost "monopol"... they can do whatever they want and you have to pay for everything that could bring you money.
But there are certainly ways that you have to discover by yourself that will bring you incredible ROI, because nobody knows them now...
The estimated traffic share does add quite a bit of value, now on to testing it out on some of our campaigns
For other people who might be confused... The opportunities tab referred to in the post refers to the opportunities tab in Search -> Keyword Rankings -> Opportunities (look on the far right, not in the side navigation). This is not the same thing as the more prominent Opportunities subsection in the Links section. :-)
That took me far longer than it should have to figure out :-) I get easily confused when I am excited about new features.
Thanks for clearing this up!
This is fantastic! Nice work all around.
Just a heads up - the link to Rand's stock option post is broken (it shows http// instead of https://)
Fixed!
Extremely helpful! Relieved I won't have to rely as heavily on custom segments in GA now :)
Thanks guys!
Awesome new feature, looking forward to analysing a new set of data!
The landing page is a good tool to see ranking per page. However, I have no idea how to set this up. At this moment, I can´t find anywhere how to set this up. Do I need to st up the google english keywords in MOZ or in Google Analytics?
That's really nice feature and will definitely help to figure it out the keywords, which Google has started blocking to appear in reports. But I've one small question in mind (May be it's a stupid! :)) but I tried on many resource to get right answer but it's still mystery for me.
So here's we Go.
Why are 20% of keywords still provided when Google is using HTTPS across the board?
Most of the searches that appear in my analytics are "not provided" because Google has encrypted their all searches. However, if all search results are now encrypted with HTTPS protocol then how did Google analytics still able to track some (20%) of the organic keywords details?
There are still some keywords appearing in my organic keywords section. So how did Google analytics do this tracking? Does it bypass the HTTPS restrictions for the referrer?
Can anyone please answer this?
I believe it has to do with a mix of browser and location. At first, Google encrypted just signed-in searches, then Chrome, etc. They didn't roll it out across all Google ccTLDs (countries, essentially) at the same time. Actually rolling out globally across all platforms is technically challenging, and I'm not sure what's left at this point. That number (20%) varies wildly by site - some people see data for <10% of keywords at this point.
Nice visualization of the data! What CTR model do you use? Thanks!
Great job and fantastic tool! As "not provided" was an earthquake in the industry, this can be equally revolutionary! Congrats guys! :)
I think this will actually be the ray of hope for the SEO's as Google analytics opt out this feature hence not giving that much in-depth observations to the SEO's.
Promising but I'm not seeing any opportunities yet.
Maybe there aren't any keywords bringing traffic to my site 8(
You just made my job so much more efficient. I had been doing this manually (grouping landing pages and keywords) for my employers website that receives 1,000,000+ sessions a month. I was able to make a small difference on a few of the 35,000+ pages, but it was the proverbial bring a toothpick to a knife fight scenario. Not enough time in the day to get it done. I am giddy with excitement and going to check the tool out NOW!
Kudos for taking something back from Google for us marketers. Virtual High Fives and Pats on Back. With my new free time I may even go outside and make a friend that is not a data set.
Any plans for expanding this feature for non-English landingpages? Looks marvellous but unfortunately can't use this tool as of yet. Feel free to add nl-NL to your featurelist going forward :)
Amazing feature added to Moz Analytics; Congrats Moz team this feature will increase your pro subscribers for sure :)
Looks promising, planning on seeing how its results compare to the processes I use to gather similar data. Hoping it is solid so the task is easier and can find this info automatically.
Are you correlating GA landing page with the page that's actually ranking for the keywords shown?
What a great feature introduced by Moz. Thanks guys and keep up the good work! You are amazing.
This seems like a good way to handle the issues of not provided. I will be interested to see how it trends over time.
Thanks again Moz!
Thanks,it's useful for me!
As always great tool, saw it a few days ago but have yet to see data in there, i suspect it may be Roger has not updated yet, if it works as well as its meant to should be very helpful.
Thanks Moz
Thanks! Greetings! :)
This is a very important feature and it will certainly helps sites to focus on keywords and relevant pages. Quick question, what is this "include pages with no tracked keywords" means? Is it mean that the tool is currently have smaller indexing paradigm? Will it show each and every keyword like GA used to present?