All posts in google analytics

(not provided)

While the search industry has been all abuzz with the bad news of Google SSL search, most average people might not even understand what happened. They may wonder “why is (not provided) my most popular keyword in Google Analytics?” (Other analytics solutions might not even show up this data at all). Also:  how can you fix it?

First off, I want to explain in simple terms what happened. I tried to explain it to my wife recently and she didn’t understand at once. So this is the version she could fathom easily:  Google hides the keywords people use to find your site from now on, or at least a significant part of them. All these hidden keywords are tagged as ‘(not provided)’ in Google Analytics.

On SEOptimise currently (the first week of November) 14,7% of Google search visitors had no keyword sent with its referrer.

The referrer is the page address where they came from. On my own blog, SEO 2.0, the number was even higher, with 16,27% of Google visitors. Also, (not provided) is the most popular “keyword” on both blogs.

Whose referral data gets hidden? All users logged in to Google services get redirected to SSL search now by default.

So all these people hide the keywords they use from the sites they visit. Google and thus the CIA, MI5 or any other secret service can still access these data for at least 18 months.

In an ideal world everybody uses analytics tools in a way that ensures that

  • conversions
  • leads
  • sales
  • ROI

get tracked and both client and SEO can

see where the most valuable visitors come from and how SEO efforts contribute to the overall success of a site.

Sadly, in reality it’s not always as easy to accomplish. While it’s now easier to sell analytics services to clients (as everybody agrees that you need them and clients are quick to give you access to Google Analytics), in many cases there are lots of issues that combined make you apply SEO tactics blindly.

Multiple Choice Exam*

If you want to become qualified in Google Analytics, Google offer an online exam called the Google Analytics Individual Qualification.  It’s a useful qualification to have when working with Google Analytics on your clients’ sites (and you should be using some analytics software!).

I passed the test last week and thought I’d put together a few tips for anyone else who may be thinking of taking the exam.


Other SEO blogs linking to us

 

While perusing the SEOptimise Google Analytics reports for last month, I noticed a few traffic spikes where I did not necessarily expect them. Upon taking a closer look, I discovered that many major traffic sources only show up as such on blogs, or rather blogs that are popular on social media.

One of the few products Google doesn’t offer yet*

It seems Google wants to inundate us with new tools, products and services these days. Is this a way to divert attention away from all the bad news about antitrust lawsuits, the FTC and the like? I don’t know. In any case, there are lots of new tools to test.

Many of these will have a huge impact on search and the Web as a whole in future.

Others mights seem less noteworthy at first, but they underscore the long term Google strategy which focuses on social, mobile and HTML5 among others.

Either way, I assume that every business person has to know about these tools, as there are plenty of opportunities here and in some cases also pitfalls.

 

google +1 button

Google +1 for websites is here for a few days, and while some people are still (or again) skeptical, there are quite a lot of webmasters who have adopted the + 1 button almost immediately. The SEO industry has been especially quick to include the buttons. I am among them, while I still don’t use the Facebook like.

I’m not going to shout hooray because Google finally released a button, but nonetheless I can see that it’s the best and the hitherto most important attempt by Google at entering the social media arena. Most others failed miserably and Google has learned some lessons it seems.

The ease of use, for instance, and the quick announcement that the +1 votes will count as a ranking factor, are good signs that +1 will still be here a year from now.

One of our clients’ sites had a sudden drop in traffic from London. After the 25th of February, all London traffic – paid, organic and direct – had dropped by nearly 45%. There wasn’t an obvious reason. There hadn’t been any changes to the PPC campaigns or search rankings. It didn’t look seasonal; there was nothing similar in previous years.  Google announced that it was updating location targeting in AdWords earlier in February, but the list of affected locations didn’t include London.  The site’s total traffic had increased slightly, so why would London’s be down?

After a little while cross-referencing half-term dates and glaring at search term reports, I looked to see if any other towns or cities had been similarly affected. And while London’s traffic had nearly halved, that Kensington’s traffic had increased by over 20,000%. Lambeth was up by over 140,000%.

Piwi goals

It’s not only the black hat and the paranoid who are increasingly wary of Google’s privacy issues. Google Analytics has come under attack repeatedly in Europe. Recently, German government officials even threatened to ​declare Google Analytics illegal.

While I consider Google Analytics a minor threat to privacy compared to other Google products and services (like Doubleclick, Google toolbar or Google Chrome), I think there is still room for improvement.

These and other reasons made me revisit Piwik, the open source, self-hosted Google Analytics alternative.

It’s a German project on top of that, so the solution is already there. I was testing Piwik two years ago in an early beta stage. Now it’s available in version 1.1.1 and already it’s quite a powerful web analytics solution.

Image by Westside Shooter.

Google Instant is the talk of the town not only in the SEO industry. While some people still hope SEO will go away most experts agree that SEO is either just changing a bit or now more important than ever due to the recent changes. So I won’t list most of the usual “SEO is not dead” posts here as I expect you to know that. I’ll focus on what the instant search results will mean for SEO, SEM and analytics in reality.

Check out the following 40 Google Instant SEO, SEM & analytics resources list. Btw. The last item is probably the best one.

Use Google Analytics custom segments to audit and improve search marketing

Anyone who has ever reviewed the keywords attracting visitors to a site will have seen that brand search terms usually dominate, often accounting for more than 50% of search related visits for well-known brands.

Every site has associated brands, but to paraphrase Morrisey, some brands are biggger than others. For these, isolating brand search is essential if you’re serious about using search to create incremental business i.e. create awareness and sales from new customers.

It follows that it’s futile to try to review and improve search engine marketing without taking brand phrases into account, but that’s the default for the less than savvy. For marketers, reviewing their analytics it’s easy to understand since the analytics tool doesn’t readily isolate brand and non-brand phrases.

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