Some time back Google made a change to the Google Analytics tool so that the vast majority of keywords that were typed in to Google and showed your website in the results would show up at ‘Not Provide.’ Google claimed that this was because of the increased security and privacy concerns for their users. While most people didn’t believe Google’s explanation at the time, there was nothing to be done. Fortunately, people could still use the Google Webmaster Tools to get the information they needed to determine how their SEO efforts were working, even if it did take extra time and effort.
Well, Google has just made an update to the Google Webmaster Tools, and now the keywords here too are showing up as ‘Not Provided.’ This effectively eliminates any truly effective way for marketers or SEO professionals to determine how well they are ranking for desired keywords, or even to see which keywords are driving the most traffic.
Once again, Google is saying that they are doing this to help ensure the privacy of the users of the search engine. The problem with this line, however, is that Google still provides the data to people who are using the AdWords platform. Of course, AdWords is not a free program, and is actually the way Google makes billions of dollars every year.
Essentially what it comes down to is Google wants to force more people to use their advertising platform to drive traffic rather than relying on organic traffic through SEO efforts.
What Does it Mean?
Other than the obvious problems that this is going to cause for anyone who uses SEO to drive traffic, it is actually going to hurt long term SEO efforts. In the past, you could employ a SEO strategy and begin to see the effects quite quickly.
This was obviously important for marketers since it would allow them to quickly learn what Google wanted and what it didn’t, so they could make the necessary changes. Another major problem is that SEO professionals will now have a much harder job at showing their clients that they are effectively optimizing their site.
The only data that will be available as proof that SEO efforts are working for either your own site or those of a client will be a generic increase in overall organic traffic. Of course, there are an endless number of things that can result in this type of increase.
This is a huge problem for marketers relying on Analytics or Webmaster tools from Google, and sadly, there is no effective alternative since Google holds the keys to the data, which they clearly aren’t going to share. This will certainly cause a lot of trouble throughout the marketing industry and will require a lot of people to make significant changes to their overall SEO strategy.
