Some big news going around in the SEO world today. It appears Google is now beginning to apply encrypted search to ALL searches.
The first I heard about this is through an aptly named post on inbound.org:
The post takes you to the notprovidedcount.com site which tracks the keyword (not provided) count across 60 sites. The graph clearly shows a dramatic spike in the amount of keyword (not provided) traffic tracked over the last month:
As you can see, going at it’s current rate will mean (not provided) will hit 100% on 11th December 2013.
Back in October 2011, Google encrypted all searches done by logged in, US users. US users who were logged into their Google account were redirected to https://www.google.com when carrying out searches. It now appears that all searches, whether done by logged in users or not, are encrypted. I did a quick test to see whether or not this was the case by logging out of my Google account and performing a search incognito:
Sure enough, the search was encrypted. (Notice the ‘https’).
Out of interest, I performed the same search on Bing:
As suspected, the search was not encrypted.
What Does This Mean?
Well, besides the fact that the searches you perform are now protected and hidden from view, it means that none of this keyword data is passed onto the publishers.
Usually when you perform a non-encrypted search and click on a site in the search results, the keyword that you searched for then appears in the publishers Google Analytics account. This data can be of great importance to SEOs in particularly. A lot can be done when you know what your customers are searching for to land on your site.
With encrypted search however, this keyword data isn’t passed on. When you look in your Google Analytics account what you will find instead of the keywords is (not provided), which is a whole lot less useful.
Looking at the analytics for one of my other blogs, the (not provided) percentage currently sits at 74.43%:
Why Now?
Any attempt to answer this question right now would simply be speculative….but there has been speculation. Over on Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan offered up two potential reasons why Google may have made this move now:
- To Block the NSA
- To Boost Ad sales
You can read more on these in his post here.
It seems that Google aren’t keeping all the keyword data secret. You can still see some (although not all) of this keyword data by logging into your Google Webmaster Tools account.
Whatever their reason, encrypted search and keywords (not provided) is on the rise. Those who used this Google keyword data will have to go elsewhere. Other search engines still pass on the keyword data….but is it only a matter of time?
For more on this topic, I recommend reading the following posts:
Goodbye, Keyword Data: Google Moves Entirely to Secure Search – Search Engine Watch
Your ‘Not Provided’ Percentage In Google Analytics Is Only Going Up – WebProNews
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