As you know, virtually all of Google's organic search traffic query data is not provided as of this week. Webmasters, marketers and SEOs are trying to grasp this concept and figure out what to do going forward.
Making do without having this raw keyword data is something we need to deal with. So what are webmasters doing?
A WebmasterWorld thread has webmasters "gathering" ideas on what can be done in this situation. Some of the ideas include:
1) Develop / install a good search facility on the site and keep the logs of internal search queries.
2) Track clicks on blog tags, or install more query-based navigation systems.
3) Leverage the Google Webmaster Tools API to take as much query data from there.
4) Consider installing search facility or suggested keywords to click into emails, social widgets, apps
5) Go fully broad match on every single keyword and pay AdWords for your data.
You can also leverage some of Google Analytics data to get insights around the data that Google will give you. Dan Barker created a notprovidedkit.com site that currently contains six dashboards that will be added to your Google Analytics screens that will give you some of those insights. They include:
(1) Your Current Percentage: A single-chart dashboard showing your current ‘not provided’ percentage (ie. how much open data remains).
(2) Full Dashboard: A full dashboard of trends for ‘not provided’, including graphs, metrics, and breakdowns by browser, device, etc.
(3) Detailed Report: A more detailed custom report showing full landing page info for not provided traffic.
(4) ‘Not Provided’ Segment: An advanced segment allowing you to see any Google Analytics reports for just ‘not provided’ traffic.
(5) ‘Keyword Known’ Segment: An advanced segment showing any report only where Google organic keyword data was known.
(6) A ‘Not Google’ Segment: This ‘Non-Google’ organic search segment shows you data only where you do have perfect keyword data from other search engines that you can act on.
How are you coping with not provided?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
This post was written earlier this week and scheduled to be posted today.
Image credit to BigStockPhoto for polaroids
