Don’t Let Google’s Search Change Destroy Your Keyword Tracking – With Video From Avinash Kaushik
Gathering keyword data from organic Google searches just got a little more complicated. Here’s what you can do about it.
What’s Changed
On October 18, Google switched search for their logged in users to SSL (HTTPS). At first, this may not sound like much of an issue, but because of the way URLs are constructed when searching with SSL, analytics tools can’t track the keywords used. This means that if someone who is logged in to their Google account searches for “Market Motive”, one piece of information will be missing. Yes, we’ll still know that the person came from Google; but we won’t know the keyword they used. (Remember, this is only for users who are logged in to their Google account when they do their search.)
What You Can Do About It
Now that you know what happened, here’s how to measure its impact on your analytics. If you’re using Google Analytics you’ll want to go to Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic and look for the keyword “(not provided)”.
The number you see next to “(not provided)” is the total number of organic search keywords coming from logged in Google users that weren’t able to be recorded.
If you’re not using Google Analytics, “(not provided)” won’t be in your keyword list; it’s a Google Analytics term. But never fear, your analytics provider just has a different naming scheme and you can ask them what it’s called in their analytics tool.
Now you’re able to see exactly what sort of impact the new change has on your analytics. In a few weeks you can check back on the data and get a much more relevant measure.
If the impact it’s having on your site is enough to make you start biting your nails and ask where all your fabulous keyword information has gone, there is a solution for you… at least a partial one. You can use Google Webmaster tools to get an aggregate listing of all of the keywords that have referred people to your site. Unfortunately, this still won’t give the level of detail we love to see in an analytics tool: the list will include all keywords from all sources, not just those lost unlogged Google user keywords, and the keywords won’t be attached to any unique visitor data.
But it’s something.
Remember: No matter what analytics tool you use, you’re still going to hit this roadblock – this is a change in Google search, not a change in any analytics tools.
Why Google Did This
Before you go call up the Google development team and berate them for eliminating a quarter of your organic keyword list, you should know why they made the change. Google made the switch to SSL for logged in users for privacy reasons. Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz goes over in more detail why Google made the SSL change.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t commiserate with your colleagues, and look for workarounds. Share your experience (and your creative solutions) with other Market Motive readers in the comments.
