Secrets to Google Organic Keyword End

Google finally closed the door on the ability to track ANY organic keyword searches coming from Google. 

See article link here: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2296351/Goodbye-Keyword-Data-Google-Moves-Entirely-to-Secure-Search

Google has transitioned to HTTPS instead of HTTP which means it’s using secure protocol to send traffic from any “free” organic search terms to a site.

What Happened: 

This was a process that started late in 2011, when Google removed about 20 – 30% of the inbound organic keyword visibility from any analytics source. It was speculative that they would take away the rest, but it’s been completed as of today’s announcement. Google has moved to a Paid-only model regarding search traffic visibility by incorporating organic search impression data into AdWords, and eliminating it from external tools (analytics). Article here. http://adwords.blogspot.com/2013/08/analyze-and-optimize-your-search.html

Impact: Optimizing organic (SEO) terms becomes more complicated, but doable. Google organic keyword will now show up as “(not provided)” in all analytics products – including Google Analytics. Google organic keywords are hidden, but Bing isn’t – and neither is Yahoo, Ask, or other smaller search engines. Google Analytics, and the Ginzametrics tool, as well as Comscore, and others will no longer show Organic keywords with high accuracy.

Work arounds: SEO (organic inbound search) keyword/competitive optimization, and SEM paid to free optimization will need to rely more heavily upon Bing, and other search engine sources in Analytics, rather than Google. We can report on traffic sources that are NOT Google for organic (free) search traffic. Even better,  AdWords reporting now includes Google Organic keywords. This means we still have visibility, but ONLY inside of AdWords.

What is not impacted: Any Paid search. It’s immune: if it follows our tagging rules. If tagging has not be properly implemented based upon the standards I’ve created, then it’s going to be hidden from Analytics, and other tools that attempt to decipher it. In Google Analytics, or any analytics, we can still see the amount of organic keywords coming in, but no longer any of their keyword names – we can do a count of (not provided) from Google/Organic source. This at least gives us a gross number for Organic metrics, but not specific organic keyword performance. As stated, AdWords Organic keyword reporting will provide our needs.

What to expect: Bing, and other search engines may provide some commentary, or even other product offerings to try to take advantage of the small window of opportunity this provides in the organic market to rebrand and gain market share in Paid traffic. Long term: seems like at least a small opening for other search engines.