This article is a bit off topic for my blog, but pretty interesting for my fellow bloggers and other website owners.
Maybe you noticed in WordPress stats or Google Analytics that you don’t get that much information anymore on used search engine terms of people that are visiting your site. 95+% of the search engine terms are displayed as ‘unknown’ or ‘not provided’:
And Google Analytics shows:
The absence of this information is due to a decision made by Google, to not provide any (organic) search queries anymore. Not provided was used by Google for logged-in Google users to maintain the privacy of the users. Not provided is now used for all organic searches, which is a pity because you cannot see which search queries were used to visit your blog. Because of privacy (says Google)? Maybe, or maybe just to keep this (very valuable) information for the Google company and boost AdWords sales….AdWords users still have access to this organic search information.
I hope this explains why your website stat might look differently. More information is available here:
- Google Analytics naar 100% not provided, article is in Dutch provided by the Dutch SEO company MaxLead.
- Post-PRISM, Google Confirms Quietly Moving To Make All Searches Secure, Except For Ad Clicks, article in English available through the searchengineland.com website.
