Ok, Google’s SSL Encryption Update brought controversy and annoyance to the World about 20 days ago. Google’s decision/idea or attempt to make search more secure online by hiding keyword referral data and giving you the keyword (not provided) lead to a controversial backlash by internet professionals, website and business owners. Find out more about the Google SSL Encryption update.
Initially this was only for .com signed in users but plans are to roll this out to the .co.uk signed in users and the rest of the world. It was expected to only effect a single digit percentage of searches and Matt Cuts (Search Quality Group at Google) openly advised that less than 10% of searches are made from Google accounts. Problem is, we’ve seen reports from all over the internet of percentage increases of the (not provided) keyword of 7 to 14% in the last 20 days and there are even some content publishers reporting that 24% of there keyword referral data is now the keyword (not provided).
This is not a joke!
With the alarming reports we’ve heard about we decided to take a closer look at the analytics data from some of our UK client’s. We checked the graph’s and were shocked when we saw the (not provided) keyword search rising! See below!
Ok so were not seeing massive numbers but remember Google’s SSL Encryption Update has only been rolled out to .com signed in users thus far, so imagine how it’s going to rise when they roll this out to the rest of the world and for all signed in users! Not only that, this issue and the keyword (not provided) is only going to get more common as Google actively promotes their new social network Google+ and refreshes the design and user ability on there Gmail email platform!
What can we do?
Well first please sign the Google SSL Encryption Update Petition. We plan to send the petition to Google once we have enough signatures! Next we need to become cleverer at tracking this lost data. Perhaps start installing and tracking search boxes on your website. Capture internal search data to find out what people came to your website for. The only other thing would be to use Google Adwords for a short period of time to capture the data as we know Secure search will not effect paid advertisements. This will be difficult though for people competing for high cost per click keywords!
Any more suggestions? Comment below!
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