• How do I optimize my site without knowing what people are searching for in organic search? (Read on for ways to evaluate keyword trends).
• How do I measure organic search strategies at a keyword level? (The focus changes to more of a content or page level measure. Visibility/rankings and estimated click-through rates may also provide some insight).
• How can I tell how much non-branded (vs. branded) traffic is coming to my site? (There is no longer a true accurate way of deciphering this. Using the methods described below can add some insight into this metric however).
• Is SEO dead? (The answer is no).
• Aren’t keyword-based queries still the foundation of Search? The answer is yes and no. Google’s recent Hummingbird algorithm update moves away from keyword-based search to more intent-based and semantic search. We will have more in an upcoming post on Google’s Hummingbird update.
• Will extracting, analyzing and acting on keyword level and page-level data be more difficult? The answer is yes.
• Has organic search become more difficult? The answer is yes.
• Do organic search results generate the majority of clicks from a Google results page? Yes, in some reports, organic clicks generate anywhere from 80-94% of the clicks from a SERP with paid clicks making up the difference. There is still huge value in optimizing and preparing relevant content as part of your organic search/SEO strategy.

So let us shed some clarity on this matter, shall we?

With Google moving to secure search, it now means that when you login to your analytics to see which keywords were driving organic traffic from Google to your site, you will no longer be able to see the keyword referring data. For example if you use Google Analytics, typically you would access the organic keywords via this report:

Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic



So let’s say that I perform a search for “mediative seo” in Google:




If you pay attention to the Google URL in the browser you will now notice that it is a secure (i.e. https) search:




By doing this Google is no longer passing the keyword referral information through. So would I have clicked on the Mediative listing, the keyword referral of “mediative seo” would just be lumped into the “not provided” basket in analytics.

Google has switched all searches over to encrypted searches using HTTPS. This means no more organic keyword data is being passed to site owners. For organic search marketers, this makes it more difficult to identify which keywords are driving traffic to your site from organic search.

About Traffic Sources

To add some additional insight, let’s discuss the concept of traffic sources. According to Google, a traffic source is defined as follows:

Source: Every referral to a web site has an origin, or source. Possible sources include: “google” (the name of a search engine), “facebook.com” (the name of a referring site), “spring_newsletter” (the name of one of your newsletters), and “direct” (visits from people who typed your URL directly into their browser, or who had bookmarked your site).

With regards to Keyword referring sources, Google describes these as:

Keyword: The keywords that visitors searched are usually captured in the case of search engine referrals. This is true for both organic and paid search. Note, however, that when SSL search is employed (e.g., if the user is signed in to a Google account, or using the Firefox search bar), Keyword will have the value (not provided).

Again, Google is no longer providing organic keyword referral data via analytics. To recap, in my previous post I had mentioned the impact that this might have on your organic search efforts:

The (not provided) Keyword Era

And so begins a new era in organic search marketing. This dramatic change by Google makes it more difficult (but not impossible) to obtain organic keyword level data. In addition, it means that we need to look to new metrics to tell the story to measure the progress of organic search efforts. Some of the insight that all of a sudden becomes more important include:

• Google Webmaster Tools keyword data – evaluating a sample list of some keywords that are sending us traffic. Google has stated that they may be looking to elaborate on this data in terms of providing more historical keyword level data (possibly from 90 days to the past year).
• Google Adwords data – interestingly enough, you can still obtain keyword level data via their paid platform. The data is still available to the paid side but no longer on the organic side.
• Analyzing page level data in addition (or opposed to) keyword level data – we will be evaluating which pages received referral visits from Google Search.
• Ranking data combined with estimated search volumes to identify keywords that we suspect are driving traffic.

Let’s elaborate on this.

7 Ways to Obtain Organic Search Keyword Insight

While we no longer have access to organic keyword referral data via analytics, there are some creative ways to obtain keyword insight into organic search.

• Leverage historical data – you will still have all your historical data for keywords prior to the SSL switch by Google. Export this data for year-to-date; export this data for last year (2012). You will have access to the keywords that were driving traffic to your site. This can provide some insight into the branded vs. non-branded dynamic as well as identify which phrases may have been the top performing keywords from a conversion or engagement perspective. This data can still be very useful for your organic search efforts.
• Leverage keyword data from Google Webmaster Tools – visit the Search Traffic > Search Queries report in GWT. While not as robust as the keyword data that we had access to in Analytics, you can still gain some insight into the terms that are driving traffic to your site from Google. Some had suggested that Google will actually be making this data more useful by adding more historical insight as opposed to just the 90 days of data that is provided today.
• Examine the paid and organic reports available from Google Adwords – in late August, Google added a new paid and organic report possibly as an attempt to connect data between Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and Webmaster Tools. Google stated that by providing this new report, their goal was to “… provide tools to help you better understand how people searching on Google are connecting with your business.”
• Pay more attention to keyword activity from other search engines – look at the keywords that were driving traffic from other sources such as Bing and Yahoo. Yes we know that probably 60-90% of your organic traffic was/is coming from Google, but at least you can still get an idea of the organic keywords that are driving traffic to your site. Yahoo and Bing still pass along search referral data, and can be a strong predictor of the phrases being used by searchers using Google.
• Improve monitoring of your site’s internal search – if you currently do not offer an internal search option on your site, there is no better time than now to set it up. What better way to gain an understanding of what people are looking for than to evaluate the terms they search for when they conduct internal searches on your site. Here is an example of how you can set up your internal site search to monitor keyword activity from users on your site.
• Leverage data from Google Trends – at a high level, Google Trends can provide some keyword-level insight from a trending perspective. You can compare search terms and segment via GEO and date range. Could it be a matter of time before Google removes Google Trends from our arsenal of keyword tools? Unlikely, but then again you never know with Google lately.
• Get better at leveraging analytics and the data at hand – the need for employing data analysts and analytics experts as part of your team just got increasingly important. There are probably few analytics experts better than Avinash Kaushik, whom a few years back when Google originally started with the whole secure search thing wrote an excellent post on smarter data analysis. While some of the customized reports that Mr. Kaushik describes may no longer work, he does illustrate the idea of looking at other metrics (think page level analysis). The bottom line is although Google has taken some data away from us, that’s ok as we still have other data sets that can provide insight as to the decisions we need to make at a keyword level, content level, or other.

It may be worth mentioning that the following will not rectify the issue:

• Changing analytics providers
• Applying keyword filters within your analytics platform

Some SEO Tips to Consider

• At the end of the day, the main focus for organic search is to create high quality content.
• It also means measuring the success (or not) at a page level.
• Taking a deeper look at your top entry pages can shed some insight into content that may be resonating with your audience. This, in turn, can provide insight into additional content topics that you can produce (as well as the type of content that you should be producing to engage your audience).
• Evaluate your site’s stickiness and pay attention to engagement metrics such as time spent, bounce rates, and exit pages. Is your content relevant to what your audience is looking for?
• Be flexible and ready to adapt your content strategy to the needs of your audience.
• Leverage data from your paid efforts for your organic search efforts. Which keyword groups are performing the best? Which keywords convert better? How can your organic efforts better compliment your paid efforts?
• Optimize for semantic search.
• Continue to build content themes around phrases that are relevant to your business and to your audience. Continue to optimize for relevant key phrases.
• Your SEO efforts should be invisible, that is, do not try to “game” the engines and do not over-optimize your site for keywords. Focus on the relevancy of your content and on providing information that your audience is looking for.
• See #1.

Remember this is not a unique problem for you and your website. This issue impacts all webmasters, site owners and online marketers. Have more questions on the whole issue of “not-provided”? Feel free to comment on this post or contact us for a free digital health check.

Additional Reads

Not Provided – What Google’s Omission of Organic Keyword Data Means for Online Marketers

Understanding Google’s ‘Keyword Not Provided’ Data


About the Author

Jody has been specializing in organic search for the better part of the past decade. Having spent seven years with Mediative (formerly Enquiro), Jody has dealt with some of the largest brands in the world reviewing sites, providing insightful analysis and mapping online strategies for our clients. Jody has contributed articles to leading industry resources such as Search Engine Guide, Web Pro News Canada, Search Engine Journal and his own blog Marketing-Jive.com. Jody has created and developed SEO for Website Redesign solutions, has prepared numerous SEO best practices and is an advocate of continuous improvement. Jody plays a key role in helping Mediative deliver cutting edge search strategies, assisting clients with adapting to the ever-changing online universe.