The curse of (not provided) data....

[Nightwing]

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

[Cyrus-Shepard]

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.

[Sarbs]

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...

[PurpleGriffon]

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.