On October 18th, 2011, Google made an announcement that they would be “making search more secure.” To give a brief recap of the announcement, Google said that they would be excluding organic search data from all “signed-in users,” in an effort to implement stronger security standards. Essentially, if you are a Google user and perform Google searches while signed-in, then the referral keyword data would be excluded from the analytics data of the sites you are visiting. In other words, Google Analytics will be unable to track the keywords that visitors are using to find your site, if the visitor is signed-in while performing a search. Instead, a new “(not provided)” keyword will show up and all signed-in users’ data will be lumped into this category. Obviously from an SEO standpoint this is troubling and will soon affect your organic search data results.

Let’s take a look at a Breckenridge client’s Analytics data to show an example of exactly how many searches this will affect. Looking at the organic traffic first, change the date range so that you are analyzing a time span from the 18th of October to today’s date, like in the example above. Next, identify that you have received data from signed-in users. Now take the amount of “(not provided)” users, and divide that by the total of organic visitors. This will give you a very crude percentage. In this example, this particular client saw a change of 1.6% in their organic search traffic. This is just the beginning. As more people sign up for Gmail and other Google services, we will likely see this number increase. While we’re not thrilled with this announcement from an SEO perspective, all indications are that this will improve privacy for signed-in Google users, while sacrificing a bit in terms of measurement of keyword referrals.

Now more than ever, your analytics need to be correctly configured to ensure that you are getting the data you need to make critical marketing decisions. As a Google Analytics Certified Partner since 2008, Blue Tent Marketing serves as a resource to ensure you are getting what you need out of Google Analytics. As you prepare for 2012, we would like to offer you the a Comprehensive Google Analytics Assessment for $249. Typically we offer this assessment for $375 and it will include a full evaluation of your filters, events, goals and dashboard. Purchase the comprehensive GA Assessment and we’ll take stock of your current Analytics configuration, ask you a few critical questions about your business goals and offer suggested improvements to make your Analytics data more relevant to your business. This will ensure that you are getting the most out of your data in 2012! As we all know, knowledge is power, and having the ability to harness that power is at your fingertips with Google Analytics!