60.76% here. First time mine passes the 60%, too.

In my german local seo blog the percentage of Keywords (not provided) is now 41,20%. This will for sure rise even more in the next time… Since 50% of my visitors are still using Firefox 13 and since germans are always very slow in updating their browsers, it will take a little bit more time here, than in the US though…

It pisses me off. Back when Matt Cutts first announced this he said it would be less than 10% of traffic. Its not even close. My smb’s don’t get anywhere near those numbers but the data is getting harder to follow.

For smb’s clarity on keywords can be critical especially if their users tend to use search to find the business or service.

Its part of an assault on SEO imho and that of others. Aaron Wall is probably the most consistently vocal in this regard.

The Google announcement was lie. Not only wasn’t it close to true then but they were feverishly working on google + back then with a strong desire to get more people to be signed into google more often.

Much of the info google puts out is deceptive enough that it makes keyword research that much more difficult. This was the nail in the coffin and they have managed to carry through on this bullshit program which they proposed under a false banner of personal security.

Google–the company with more private info on more users in more ways than anyone else. They have been fighting in the courts against their invasions of privacy.

What it really is …is the power of a monopoly to gain still more monopoly control over an aspect of the web.

RANT OVER

😀 have a nice day 😀

I wonder what would have happened if Google instead:

1) Provided an option to conceal your search data when logged in
2) Stopped providing referral data when moving linking to a HTTP URL

For those with privacy concerns, they can choose to conceal their search term data.

Businesses that want/need search referral data to do a good job(tm), move their sites over to HTTPS thus allowing the referral data to naturally flow from Google secure search through to the resulting HTTPS website.

In due course, that kind of action makes the entire internet a more secure place by increasing the volume of HTTPS traffic and avoiding everyone snooping on traffic in between the client and the destination – which is one of the reasons that Google cited why it was moving over to secure search for int the first place.

Mike: With the growth of google’s Not provided element, hiding keyword phrases for those signed into google…keyword research is much more difficult for a small business, yet as critical as it always was to try and

A). First understandwhat terms users are searching for
B). Understanding which terms work for conversion
C). Setting up a goal to move the smb/site to higher rankings.

Its a “bitch”. I was looking at an smb of ours that is several years old. We developed a new site for it several years ago and worked to get it higher rankings.

The smb/business/ web site competes with up to about 5 other local/regional smb’s/sites. (# of competitors depends on how one views the geography and competition.). All of the other sites were older and clearly more established.

The site uses adwords and bing/yahoo advertising. I value that as not only an adjunct to providing search phrases in the advertising slots above the organic/ maps/pinned results….but as a critical methodology to assess what keyword terms searchers are using.

So I start looking at all SE traffic to the site: Google traffic is over 90%. (yikes).

On this smb an aggressive Adwords campaign results in adwords clicks being slightly less but almost as much as organic/maps results:

NOT PROVIDED is coming in at between 20-25% of organic clicks. But lets face it…people signed into google + are clicking on the ads. How many? I don’t know. But probably at a similar percentage rate.

Now about my keyword data:

Without getting into all the details, I’d just say that the simplest, possibly most intuitive views of the uninitiated at analytics data could present incredibly erroneous information. Specifically, if you tie an analytics campaign to an adwords campaign (something google encourages)…the simplest presentation of keyword data is going to OVERINFLATE traffic on keywords where you run broad term campaigns.

BAM//BAM//BAM. Either you are getting terrible information from analytics if you tie the analytics campaign to adwords….or….if you don’t have an adwords campaign then the only visits you get are through organic/Maps and frankly google is hiding the keyword data on ever growing volumes of searchers, increasingly signed into Google.

IMHO its a big effort by Google to make keyword research more difficult.

I think the small smb is the BIG LOSER in this. To fully understand all the intracacies of keyword research one needs to spend enormous time studying it and keeping abreast of ever changing facets of google products.

Aaron Wall of http://seobook.com continuously says this. I agree wholeheartedly.

Only specialists can stay abreast of everything. One cannot be an expert on all things. Its too time consuming.

<b.To get back to that small smb and the importance of keyword research

When we set up the url and focused on appropriate pages and phrases we did our keyword research and among other things we understood, even before we had seen the hard data, that probably one of, if not the most important keyword phrase was going to be —–Main industry phrase/ geographical phrase.

Our question was simply which comes first…the geography or the industry phrase. Time and again I’ve found that this critical element changes for industry and market.

We chose one alternative: All of the data we had before we started didn’t distinguish between the two alternative approaches.

We picked the wrong one!!! Its popular and used a lot…but its only about 20% as popular as the alternative.

So our site went up. We achieved very high ranking for the alternative we chose pretty quickly. Rankings for the alternative were okay but lagged.

Once we realized our mistake, months later, after reviewing all data, especially the critical data from adwords, we went on a mad mad campaign to achieve #1 ranking for the alternative.

Upon achieving that, leads and sales improved markedly. It made a big positive impact on the smb.

Keword research is critical for the smb. Google is making it immeasurably more difficult. A pox on that damned NOT PROVIDED BS.

Alistair:

Google Analytics will overstate simple aggregate keyword traffic in some of the more visible and visited stats packages in this way:

A). Say you are running an adwords campaign for a computer training school in Sydney Australia.
B). Say you use google analytics.
C). Google Analytics will encourage you to tie the adwords campaign to analytics for various further detail information with regard to conversions and conversion statistics.

D). For the adwords campaign you might use both exact phrase and broad phrase for certain critical keywords:

for example you might run both exact phrase and broad phrase for…

computer training
computer school
Sydney computer school
Sydney computer training
computer training Sydney
computer school Sydney.

Lets just imagine those are the 4 most searched upon terms for that service.

Just focus on the phrase computer training.

ads will show for that specific phrase and will run against your keyword in the [exact phrase] row specifically each time a searcher uses precisely that phrase.

Alternatively, broad phrase coverage of computer training might show an ad and record statistics for related phrases by users such as….

computer training in sydney
computer training near me
computer training center
computer training classes….and 1,000 different variations.

When you tie adwords to analytics…the major presentation of keyword information within Analytics will show all the clicks from
A) organic rankings
B) A pinned ranking when the user clicks on the website (not the reviews)
C all the traffic that clicks on the exact phrase ads
D all the clicks that hit the broad phrase ad

D is where the overstatement occurs for the keyword phrase “computer training”.

Those broad phrase ads might generate lots and lots of clicks, in fact potentially myriads more than usage of the exact term.

In our cases, by example, we’ll use a broad phrase for a popular term and an exact phrase. Analytics will show aggregate traffic that exceeds impressions for the precise term. That is crazy. It can’t happen.

OOF that is very misleading. Alternatively Analytics shows a column of information described as “matched phrase” That reflects actual hits for the exact term. But to know that, you have to pay attention to a lot of detail and spend a tremendous amount of time learning all of the ins and outs of all of Google’s products.

One simply has to be abreast of all of the details of analytics, adwords, etc. to catch on to all of these details.

Its a daunting task. I don’t believe smb’s have the resources or man power to follow everything from google with detail. Enterprise businesses can do this. Enterprise SEM’s can do this with specialization. Otherwise its daunting.

Great comments, thanks earlpearl!

I thought I’d add my 2 cents from an SMB. This local auto repair shop gets around 20% not provided for all visits, but for new vists it’s up to 60%. 🙁

I took a call from a google adwords customer service rep earlier today. While this thread is about google’s NOT PROVIDED data –I had commented earlier about how:

1. growth in Not Provided and other issues makes keyword research significantly more difficult for the smb.

2. then veered off into commentary about adwords/keyword research–all the details an smb or single seo has to follow to try and stay abreast of changes.

Well—taking calls from G adwords customer reps is a good way to stay abreast of various changes, points of sophistication, etc. with adwords. It saves a lot of time in research, reading, watching tutorials, etc.

The other point that grabbed my attention and is so incredibly different in a night and day completely opposite perspective is the following:

Google gives incredible detailed, polite, knowledgeable, responsive, helpful, friendly, insightful customer service directly to adwords customers.

Google treats those same smbs/ customers like SH!T in google +Local.

Its astounding. Not another business in the world would do so. Actually sophisticated large businesses such as banks and airlines use deep data resources (something google is simply 10,000 times better at) to identify good customers and treat them well.

Google could do that. But it doesn’t. Its deliberate. They don’t have to . They are a monopoly. They live without oversight from a larger entity and can get away with god awful responsiveness on the +Local side…while they treat you well and respectively on the Adwords side.

Its simply astonishing and something you can’t find from any other entity anywhere.

The content from all those smb’s is what drives searches in which certains of those smb’s do buy adwords. If not for both the content, and the usage…there would be no ads.

Why google can’t raise its level of customer service to smb’s in the +Local side to something….possibly 10% as good as in the adwords side is beyond me. Sometimes those smbs are exactly the same.

Okay…I know why they don’t do that. They are a monopoly. They choose not to improve that level of customer service. And no entity is on their collective Google A$$es to do so.

Its a shame.

my $0.02. 😀

Mike: I suppose you might see this, while its late comments will skip most others. Secondly its not the place to get high visibility on the issue of “not provided”.

But, after all, thanks for providing this forum. Its a great place for me to KVETCH!!! 😀 😀

With one of our smb’s recently adding a mobile site I was reviewing source activity via mobiles and reviewing keywords.

Lest we all forget…..google is not blocking kewords from analytics on mobile sites.

How Frigging ironic and deeply contrary to Matty Cutts original comments about why google was establishing “not provided” (as a security issue) let alone his original comments about “not provided” not exceeding 10% of traffic.

UTTER BULLSHIT!!!

keyword traffic from mobile sites does not include “not provided” data.

Irony of ironies. There are significantly more opportunities to tie in with a direct user from a mobile device than from a land line device.

So much for the “security crap” from Matt Cutts.

I maintain the only reason big G did this was to make it harder to work on keyword research.

The dogs.

kvetch kvetch kvetch. 😀