42 replies to this topic

[Michael Martinez]

They are still making the data available through Webmaster Tools. What you cannot do with that data is tie the queries to individual users.

[Jill]

Except that you could never tie the data to individual users.

[Michael Martinez]

Except that you could never tie the data to individual users.

You're right, but clearly Google "felt" they had a privacy issue, so they took action.

I'm not going to defend or justify their decision. It's done. I'll live with it.

[Jill]

Agree. Me too.

[Hichem]

I don't agree.
They didn't do it for "privacy issue"
there is already the secure search option! and they could feature it or make it more popular ..

if it's about privacy, why adwords websites still get the data ?

[Jill]

It doesn't really matter why they did it. The fact is that they did it and there's nothing we can do with it but live with it.

[Gerry White]

One thing people are doing is a "hack" DanBarker demo'd on econsultancy http://econsultancy....ack-from-google not perfect, in the UK the not provided has just spiked substantially and more and more cases of not provided for various reasons are creeping in... I don't really fully understand why Google has done it, and the ability to tune landing pages, etc.. has always been a core part of my job so it is sad missing any data. I just need to persuade people that Google is evil and they should logout ...

[Tiggerito]

I'm at 38% (not provided). it seems my visitors are ahead of the game. I knew they were smart ;-)

March showed a big jump with my not provided count doubling since Feb!

Edited by Tiggerito, 23 March 2012 - 11:18 PM.

[Jill]

Yep it's really climbing fast lately. Mine was 27% a few days ago and continuing to climb.

[1dmf]

Well at least this explains the phenomenon I've been experiencing with the GRET (Google Rank Extractor Tool) Randy and myself developed.

More and more entries are showing as 'N/A' as the keyword phrase, I spent an hour a week ago trying to find a bug in the code to see why so many visits were missing the keyword data. I couldn't find anything wrong, and was left a bit puzzled. Now I know why!



Typical, my visitor stats are starting to increase daily just as the info on how they find me falls through the floor!

So much for trends analysis and keyword research!

Chris-> it's the query string parameter 'q' , that seems to be being witheld from the clickthrough!

Edited by 1dmf, 05 April 2012 - 07:27 AM.

[Jill]

And now mine is up over 50%!

See my latest article on this topic:

Measuring Natural Keyword Traffic in the Age of (Not Provided) Secure Search

[1dmf]

It was your newsletter article that brought me to this thread ;-)

As I don't use GOAN anymore due to the cookie directive, I guess I'll have to check my GWMT account more often!

[Jill]

I was surprised to find that a lot of people who don't read all the typical SEO stuff like many of us do, weren't even aware of the whole NP thing. Or at least how bad it was getting.