What do you think of Google SERP encryption?

[Olivier_Lambert]

Really interesting post by Search Engine Land about this "issue" for tracking conversion, especially for long tail keyword research. I suppose this change will be also applied on all google search pages (.ca, .fr etc.).

I Really don't think Webmaster tools is a serious compensation in Analytics for this.

[Olivier_Lambert]

Maybe it's partly because most of my visitors came from Google.ca, but at this moment, "not provided" is under 0,5% of my search traffic.

[StoresDirect]

I'm concerned about this issue. I use this data not just when doing keyword research and deciding on strategy but also to measure the effectiveness of my work. I work not just to improve SERP performance but to improve site performance by better serving visitor needs, and to do that effectively I need to know what brought them to us.

I think it would be fair enough to give people the option to protect their search results when they are signed in to a Google account, but also think people should have the option to allow their search data to be available to the sites they visit without having to sign out of their account to do so. It's not an immediate problem for us as we are based in the UK, but I expect it to hit us in due course as Google roll this out to other areas.

I find it hard to believe that the loss of data will be as low as Google are saying. And the explanation they have given for continuing to provide that data to paid advertisers sounds like b*$^#@%£ to me.