The curse of (not provided) data....
-
Buongiorno from 23 degrees C Wetherby UK
Do you ever get the impression Google doesnt Like SEO practitioners? Thing is the (not provided) snag in the key word Analytics data is a complete pain in arse. Yes you can go into webmaster tools and get a feel for organic keyword data but the joy stops abruptly when you need a full picture of traffic acquisition from a specific keyword.
So my question is please:
"When a client asks, give me traffic data acquired from an organic phrase". How on earth can you give an accurate answer? And to add salt into the wound the traffic data is going to be less so your SEO efforts are going to take a hit".Is the answer use another analytics service?
Grazie tanto,
David -
Unfortunately, using another analytics provider won't help, because Google strips the keyword information from the referrer string before it ever hits your analytics software. Hence, no analytics provider will be able to give you that information. (and some theorize this is exactly why Google did it - to stop certain 3rd parties from collecting keyword data that Google itself makes money on)
So what can you do? A few options:
1. Use the data from Google Webmaster Tools: A lot of folks argue (myself included) that the data isn't as usefull, but at least it's something.
2. Urge your client to move away from keyword based reporting. Annie Cushing made an excellent presentation on this topic: http://www.slideshare.net/anniecushing/breaking-up-with-your-organic-keyword-data
3. Use any one of several workarounds to better understand your not provided data. Here's a partial list: http://cyrusshepard.com/7-fantastic-seo-tips-for-googles-not-provided-keywords/
In the end we're likely never to get those keywords back, so we'll have to work with alternative solutions.
-
One potential way around this is to capture the search term form the URL parameters of the refering URL when a user enters your site from a search engine. But then you need to store that and somehow pass it back to yourselves, and you will not be able to tie it into your analytics data that i am aware off.
Additionally im not sure of the top of my head that the referral URL is sent from firefox or people in private session / logged into Google so if that is the case then this method wont actually help you...
-
Unfortunately, the power here lies with the user who is performing the search. For example, if they use an incognito window or other method to browse and search anonymously, then this information is not going to be tracked. There's pretty much nothing you can do about it.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Longterm wordpress blog not providing seo benefit to main site - help needed please
Hi I have a bigcommerce ecommerce store, with a Wordpress blog on a subdomain. The store and blog have been active for four years, the blog is regularly updated with original content, has many links to the store, is promoted regularly via my brand's social media channels and mailing list, and has the simplest SEO basics covered via a Yoast SEO plugin. But the store sees very little, if any, SEO benefit from the blog. My question is: based on this information, and the details below, is there an issue with the connection between the blog and main site in SEO terms? And if there is, how can I start fixing it? Further info: 1 In my Moz dashboard for the store site, the blog does not show at all as providing any inbound links or linking domains 2 Google Analytics also shows zero referral traffic to the store site from the blog since April 2015 3 Moz crawl issues is flagging ‘duplicate page content issues’ for pretty much every page of the blog, and the analysis provided suggests this may be related to tags but I have only basic SEO knowledge and am fast getting out of my depth here. 4 I have today altered the settings within the Yoast plugin on the blog to ‘noindex’ for Tags, Meta Robots, based on advice I have found in this section but am already well over my head and unsure even this is correct. An agency have been running SEO for the store since 2012 but since uncovering how little they have done in this time for the money paid, I am now taking matters back into my own hands. However I am on a very steep learning curve and this one is beyond me right now - please does anyone have any suggestions where I can start looking to uncover the root issue? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated Thanks very much and hope to hear from someone!
Reporting & Analytics | | Warren_331 -
How do sites without access to a site's analytical data, determine a site's organic traffic?
I've recently used a organic traffic checker that showed you your traffic compared to each google algo update. I was interested in how they derived the organic traffic totals for each month, without having access to our site's google analytics? I've since compared the data to historical google analytics data and it's not wrong, isn't 100% match either but isn't far from fact. So if they're predicting or making a guess, it's rather spot on, site crawlers and SERPs snapshots only provide so much info, I'm just wondering where they get the rest from and how?
Reporting & Analytics | | Deacyde0 -
When I click on organic search, the biggest drop is on keyword "not provided". What does this mean?
I am trying to identify the reason for the drop in organic search.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sable_Group0 -
Does applying filters in Google Analytics affect Moz Data?
Hello, I'm dealing with spam in google analytics, applying filters (and using segments for historical data) Does applying a filter in GA affect Moz data, future or historical? Is there a way of doing this? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | wearehappymedia0 -
Weird referral data. Spam?
Hi all, a few of my sites are suffering from referral spam. I read a couple of articles here on how to exclude them from your traffic using htaccess but today I was going through some referral stats of the company I work for and I noticed a lot of referral traffic coming from prod2.ssosecure.com I didn't find any article telling me this is spam, so it could also be an intranet of one of our clients where they are sending their employees to our application. Anybody a clue what this could be?
Reporting & Analytics | | jorisbrabants0 -
Google Webmaster Tools is showing wrong data - help?
Hey all, I'm seeing some weird problems with Webmaster Tools. Specifically: We've submitted a sitemap with 174k URLs. According to the WMT dashboard, only 21 are indexed, though if you search our site via site:sitename.com blah blah, there are thousands of pages returned. Why is WMT only showing 21 indexed pages? Yet if I go to Health -> Index Status, it's showing nearly 199k URLs indexed. This seems consistent with searching Google site:sitename.com blah blah. Under "Search Queries", it's showing "no data available". Not sure why as it's linked to the proper Google Analytics account, which has keyword data. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | chimptech0 -
Not provided keyword?
This may be a realy daft question this is all new to me, when I look at my keyword traffic the top one under keyword says not provided can someone explain this to me please?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoactivejames0 -
Does Google Analytics use your data against you?
I couldn't find this question answered anywhere in Q&A, so I apologize if it's a duplicate of another post. I heard, about a year ago on either Web Pro World, or Warrior Forum that Google uses your visitor data in your Google Analytic account to rank your site. Someone said that when they took out the Google code, their site went from the third to the first page within 48 hours. That was then verified over the next couple of weeks by others. Their thought was that regardless of the optimized page and incoming link, if the site wasn't getting visitors, then it would be penalized. Since Google has the data, they would be able to use it. I then started using another, paid, solution - getclicky.com. While I like clicky, there is some info Google has that clicky doesn't, everyone integrates with Google analytics - like SEOmoz, and I'm paying a monthly fee. Now that I'm a part of a community of experts, what do you think? Have you noticed Google ranking you based on your analytics data? Has anyone experienced this, or heard about it before? Because I'd like to go back to using Google analytics. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | DallasBonsai0