Google Analytics “Not Provided” Is Getting Worse
Last year Google announced that they would start encrypting search data when a user is logged into their Google account. Google Analytics would still track these visitors once they arrived on the site, but the keywords searches used to find the website would now be listed under “Not Provided”. Google assured site owners that the encrypted search would only impact about 10% of analytics. Although it’s less than ideal, I was still confident that I’d be able to make valuable SEO recommendations for my SEO clients based on the remaining data. However, it became quickly evident that the 10% was a far cry from what was actually happening.
It’s been less than a year since Google announced their encrypted search update, and I’ve seen my own website’s analytics be impacted so dramatically that over 60% of the keyword information is listed under “Not Provided.” Most of my clients are also seeing “Not Provided” dominate their analytics. Losing that data makes SEO a lot harder than it needs to be. Knowing what keywords people are using to find your website tells you if you’re targeting the right keywords, if there are any changes in search behavior, if your SEO campaign is pulling in searches for the right keyword variations and more. With more than 50% of that data missing how can we effectively judge the impact and success of our SEO campaigns? While we may not be working completely in the dark, it’s definitely getting a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
Has anyone gotten so fed up with the “Not Provided” data that they’ve jumped the Google Analytics ship?
I know there are other analytics providers out there, but I’ve avoided using them for my own site, as well as my clients, for several reasons. First off, a lot of second party analytics providers get their data from Google. If Google isn’t passing along all of the information to their own tool I highly doubt those third party providers are getting the missing pieces. Secondly, third party analytics tools can get very expensive very quickly. While a major enterprise might be able to the cost, there are plenty of small to medium sized websites that’s simply can’t justify the cost. Google Analytics is a free tool, and up until the encrypted search announcement it was a pretty great one. Now site owners who can’t afford the third party analytics are caught between a rock and a hard place; they can’t afford to pay for the data that used to be given for free.
I’ve seen client experiment with some of the cheaper analytics solutions in the past, and oftentimes it negatively impacts their site in one way or another. Every extra piece of code you put on your website has the potential to cause problems. One of my consulting clients actually took a hit in the SERPs after he installed a new analytics solution and was only able to rebound after he removed it. I don’t want to risk that happening with my site or any of my client’s sites.
What are you doing to work around the “Not Provided” data? Have you found new ways to dig through Google Analytics to get the information you need or have you adopted a new analytics provider?
9 Responses to “Google Analytics “Not Provided” Is Getting Worse”
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I’ve not run into it yet, but your findings are a bit worrying! Looks like Google is heading towards a paid-for service for Analytics, which may hit small businesses hard, especially in the current climate.
It will also be difficult for SEO copywriters who don’t have the budget to invest in expensive analysis programs (like me!!). I’ll be very interested to see what other low price or free options become available.
I’ve found that Google Webmaster Tools will provide you with a report on “queries”. While not keywords, these will give you an indication as to how users are finding you, and the pages they hit once they do.
Our top “keyword” is “Not Provided” as well; I don’t know if making Analytics more convoluted than it already was is a strategic priority of Google – if so, they’ve succeeded thus far.
Oh, and Craig – they do already have a paid for service, GA Premium. I suspect your prediction is correct, which is unfortunate.
I’m confused here for a moment. What value will dropping the free Google Analytics get you? This issue of not getting data from secured searches will be the same with “for fee” systems like SiteCataylst, right?
Hi Bob,
Thanks for your comment and for reading.
Exactly, are there any LOW cost good quality alternatives? A product such as Ominiture tends to be out of the reach for most small businesses…
Thanks,
Nick
Hi Nick (first time here),
Although I could be said to be biased (disclaimer: being one of those low cost alternatives providers), we have discovered that most websites, even when losing data (yes, Google blocks us from seeing those keywords sometimes too), still have enough data to work on. It’s not perfect and doesn’t give the full picture, but it’s enough to find room for improvement with websites and SEO.
For example, if previously, a website had 100 people enter it on a ‘widgets’ page, then for most of those 100 it would have been possible to see the keyword phrases used. Suppose 30% of those get blocked in analytics – that’s still 70 people where you could see the keyword phrase typed, how each of them navigated through the site after landing, and (where relevant) what company they were from. That’s still a decent amount of data. If it showed you that many of those 70 went no further than the landing page (or got stuck elsewhere) then that’s still useful information.
Focusing particularly on small businesses, what we find is that our analytics users (within those businesses) are so busy (in their work) that they are content to use the data that analytics gives them because it at least tells them something they can fix. Yes, if they had 100% of the keyword phrases etc. then it could help more but in our experience they’ve got plenty to be focusing on without complete data.
Having said all that, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before Google starts blocking even more. After all, it works in its favour if end users can’t see where there is wastage (PPC being a particular money burner in the wrong hands).
When it comes to analytics in general, we are, unfortunately years away from the point where most businesses (especially small businesses) view strong analytics as being as routine activity as checking email, writing a Word document etc. I have to confess to being surprised at how many years it’s taking for the mindset to change.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for much for sharing your thoughts and for reading!
Take Care,
Nick
Hi Nick,
I found your blog while doing some research on this for a blog post for our website (check it out soon!) the NP numbers for our client aren’t anywhere near as bad as yours but it is defintely a growing problem.
One thing to add to the discussion though is that I don’t think ANY analytics provider can ever get you the data back can they? I read quite a bit about this a while ago and discovered that G does all sorts of redirects to strip off the referring phrase so you will never be able to get it back. Unless you know otherwise?
I, too, have noticed this trend, and we manage a network of roughly 20 in house and 40-50 external sites across our business.
I am toying with the idea of ditching all analytics for one of our in house sites. We have a good metric: sales. Its the only stat that matters. We can track basic visitor numbers in the backend, the only thing that’s holding it back is advertisers want to see Google stats.
So we must persist.
The withheld figures aren’t too much of a problem – the content accessed generally points to the ballpark, and webmaster tools (as another commenter points out) also sheds some light.
One of our clients also uses another stat tracker, which gives this info even on logged in Google users.
Honestly i’ve been using Stat Centric these days instead of Google, but I logged into my account recently and saw this problem has indeed increased dramatically. I think you are missing the point perhaps. These (not provided) entries are a result of google encrypting search keywords for anyone logged in to their google account. You will see this issue with any analytics provider. I see the same problem when I use Stat Centric although the (not provided) entry is not shown. I don’t think this has anything to do with Google wanting to charge for analytics. This is about people paranoid about privacy and Google’s greed to get you to use their PPC service, which does provide keyword data. Yup they are concerned about your privacy except when you click on their paid ads.