Google Analytics is the one-stop-shop for all information about keyword performance, site traffic and conversion statistics but what about those organic keyword metrics that are 'not provided'?
It's frustrating seeing (not provided) in the number 1 spot on your organic keyword listing. (Not provided) certainly doesn't help you track down which organic keyword phrases were used by customers to find your site, how they got there or how well your keyword research is helping you gain traffic.
So what does 'not provided' mean? In a nutshell, a Google user was logged in when they conducted their organic search ie. logged into Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google+ or using the Firefox search bar. When logged in, all searches are conducted over SSL which means they are 'secure' so the referral information from that search is hidden and unreadable by Google in the attempt to protect privacy.
Google says: "When you sign in to Google.com, your organic search is conducted in a secure context. If you visit a site from those search results, the visit is still categorized as organic, but your query terms are not available in the report. The label (not provided) is used in place of the query terms. Referral traffic and cpc traffic are not affected by the secure context, nor are any of your other statistics like conversion rates."
Considering Google+ now has over 500 million registered users with Google+ accounts, that is a huge number of logged in customers that are searching and finding sites without Google Analytics being able to ascertain how they got there.
This is literally becoming a bigger problem by the day but there are a few ways to obtain information about those 'not provided' searches and gain some insights into the behaviour of these customer metrics -
- Add a filter to your profile to extract the 'not provided' terms or review which landing pages your 'not provided' results are leading to.
- Look at the 'logged out' Search Engine Optimisation Queries to identify top performing keywords or phrases.
- Use Webmaster Tools list of the top 1,000 Search Queries and Landing Pages customers have used to find you over the last 30 days to gain further details about the phrases customers are using. Unfortunately these aren't linked to landing page reports but are great to track keyword posisions and click-through rates. You can also link your GA account and your Webmaster Tools account so that you can view these statistics from your GA console.
- Make your Primary Dimension in Search Overview the 'Keyword' so that you can see what groupings of landing pages, visits and bounce rates each of the 'not provided' phrases made.
- Use your Adwords SEM metrics using 'Matched Search Queries' reports to can see 100% of the search phrases that ended with a click-through to your site so you can see how well you are converting search traffic from the keywords you are targeting and if the click correlated to a conversion.