Analytics - The Rise of 'Not Provided' Organic Search Data and Issues for SEO

A major change to how Google passes organic search keyword data to Analytics is currently underway.

Previously people logged into Google performed searches over a secure connection. This meant that keyword data was not provided to Google Analytics and appeared as such within organic search reports.

Google have now decided to divert other (and eventually all) users to also perform searches over a secure connection. The effect of this will be a rapidly dwindling volume of organic search keyword data within Analytics and an inexorable rise in the volume of "not provided" search.

Historically SEO companies have relied heavily upon Analytics data to demonstrate the impact of their work. Measurement has focused on the volume of traffic from particular keywords, long tail search and non-branded terms as a whole. It's also been important to demonstrate that keyword search traffic actually led to desirable onsite behaviours (e.g. visitors making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter) rather than inflating traffic figures simply for the sake of it.

In future it will be much harder to demonstrate that increases in organic search are purely down to the efforts of your SEO provider. For example are increases in search traffic due to an improved ranking or simply down to increased brand awareness that has nothing to do with your SEO company. This poses a major challenge to SEO providers with SEOMoz even questioning whether this is the first existential threat to SEO.

So what to do about the change? SEO is not about to die but it did just get harder. Companies will need to place heavier reliance upon Google Webmaster data - it's rumoured here that reports may extend from the last 90 days to 1 year which should help if true.

Paid search data is likely to become increasingly important in testing keyword performance on your site - for example to decide what terms are more likely to drive conversion. Assuming Bing and Yahoo continue to provide keyword data, analysis will remain possible here. However the much smaller share of search (particularly in certain markets) may make extrapolation difficult.

Analysing what landing pages people are directed to via organic search in Analytics is likely to also prove important. The use of additional profiles and advanced filters should help here.

In summary "Not Provided" data is likely to pose a challenge to many organisations. If you are having problems and would like to discuss options to improve your monitoring of organic search please get in touch.